This Blueprint is a whole-of-government effort that aims to provide a resource to assist federal decisionmakers in leveraging social and behavioral science to improve policy and program design and delivery.
The Advancing Economic Mobility for Low-Income Families report, published by the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices, provides policy options for governors to strengthen economic security, workforce participation, and wealth-building opportunities for low-income families.
An America where no one experiences poverty is possible. Already, the U.S. has programs with the potential to make this vision a reality, including programs that provide cash assistance, like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The current TANF program provides very little cash assistance and is marked by stark racial disparities, but it has the potential to reduce child poverty, increase economic security, and advance racial equity. This report offers a vision for an anti-racist approach to the TANF program, with new statutory goals and policy recommendations to advance racial justice.
This report examines how implementing Asset Verification Systems (AVS) can streamline Medicaid eligibility determinations for seniors and individuals with disabilities by automating the verification of applicants' financial assets.
This toolkit offers strategies for advocates and state agencies to enhance the efficiency of eligibility verification processes for Medicaid and SNAP, aiming to reduce administrative burdens and improve access to benefits.
This report summarizes progress made with agencies and members of the public to identify and reduce burdens that individuals, families, and small businesses face every day when interacting with government programs.
This Urban Institute article argues that poverty is driven by structural barriers rather than individual choices and advocates for safety net programs that address systemic inequities.
Though the rhetoric of “waste, fraud, and abuse” is ubiquitous when it comes to welfare programs, low-income households receive little relief from benefits programs. Most efforts to make public benefits systems more “efficient” actually just waste time and money in practice. They instead serve to stigmatize low-income families and chip away at the little assistance that remains available to them.
A study shows that Benefits Data Trust’s outreach and application assistance significantly increased SNAP enrollment among North Carolina seniors, improving health outcomes and reducing Medicaid costs.
The "Implementing Paid Family and Medical Leave" report examines New Jersey's experience with paid leave programs, offering insights and recommendations for effective policy design and implementation.
It is necessary give the public servants who manage safety-net systems the technology tools and incentives to track critical outcomes and meet people where they are.
A modernized public benefits system would better serve program participants, administrators, policy makers, and taxpayers. This paper proposes a set of principles both define the desired future state and outline the values that shape decision making along the way. Practices describe the processes needed to achieve modernization.
