The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps (or CalFresh in California), is a critical part of the nation’s safety net. Though SNAP provides important assistance to families during periods of economic insecurity, not all eligible households participate. One reason enrollment may be low is because eligible households leave the program too early.

In this brief, we present evidence that paperwork burdens are causing otherwise eligible households to drop out of CalFresh, an especially troubling finding given California’s current economic situation. Using a conservative estimate, CPL found that more than half (55%) of households leaving the CalFresh program are still likely eligible for the program when they leave. CPL also found that people are six times more likely to leave CalFresh in the month that they have to recertify their eligibility. The policy brief is based on the accompanying working paper.

This work has been supported, in part, by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grants MRP-19-600774 and M21PR3278.

The federal and state Earned Income Tax Credits can provide a significant financial boost to low-income Californians. However, there is concern that some eligible Californians are missing out on these credits, and this report summarizes a two-year effort to increase the number of eligible Californians who claim the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITCs), which can provide a significant financial boost to low-income families.

In a series of randomized trials, more than one million Californians received text messages and letters designed to inform them about the credits. Although some people engaged with online resources about the EITC shared in the texts and letters, these efforts had no effect on increasing the number of people who filed a tax return or claimed the EITCs, indicating that these additional, targeted outreach strategies were not enough to increase take-up of the EITCs amongst low-income households.

This work has been supported, in part, by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grant MRP-19-600774.

The newly expanded federal Child Tax Credit (CTC) will provide a significant financial boost for families throughout the U.S. While most low-income families have already received advanced payments of the new CTC, because families need to have filed a tax return to receive it, some low-income families will likely miss out on receiving some or all of the credit. This brief sheds light on which Californian children and families are at risk of not receiving the CTC. Using matched social services and state tax data, we analyze the characteristics of over 650,000 children who we estimate are at risk of not receiving the expanded CTC. One main reason that these children may miss out on the CTC is that their families had little reason to file taxes before the pandemic.

This work has been supported, in part, by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grants MRP-19-600774 and M21PR3278.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) distributes more than $60 billion to over 20 million low-income families annually. Nevertheless, an estimated one-fifth of eligible households do not claim it. We ran six pre-registered, large-scale field experiments to test whether “nudges” could increase EITC take-up (N=1million). Despite varying the content, design, messenger, and mode of our messages, we find no evidence that they affected households’ likelihood of filing a tax return or claiming the credit. We conclude that even the most behaviorally informed low-touch outreach efforts cannot overcome the barriers faced by low-income households who do not file returns.

This work has been supported, in part, by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grant MRP-19-600774.

Some of our nation’s most important anti-poverty programs are increasingly distributed through federal and state tax systems. This is true of the recent pandemic-related stimulus checks, but is also true of ongoing programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the California Earned Income Tax Credit (CalEITC). These credits can provide a substantial financial boost to low-income Californians, but many of these households are at high risk of not receiving these tax credits because they are not required to file taxes. Understanding who does not receive these credits despite being eligible can shed light on how to ensure that all eligible Californians receive them. In this brief, we share the first-ever estimate of the CalEITC Take-up Gap, including the number of Californians enrolled in CalFresh who did not receive the CalEITC in 2017 and the dollar amount unclaimed.

This work has been supported, in part, by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grants MRP-19-600774 and M21PR3278.