For millions of Americans, public benefits play a critical role in helping make ends meet, but the way these benefits cut off as income rises can mean families face a financial setback when their earnings increase. This brief explains what benefits cliffs are and shares recommendations with policymakers for creating clear, understandable step-downs in benefits programs to help families translate increased earnings into increased financial security.
Archive: Brief
Maryland’s One Benefits Application: A Case Study in People-Centered Modernization
Millions of Americans rely on public benefits to meet daily needs, yet unnecessary barriers and outdated technology too often make accessing help a struggle. GCPI’s People-Centered Digital Benefits Project highlights state innovations for modernizing benefits delivery systems to meet people’s needs.
In this case study, Visiting Fellow Andrés Argüello explores Maryland’s people-centered design approach to building the One Benefits application—which allows people to apply for multiple public benefits programs through a single, streamlined application—and the leadership, governance, and organizational structures that were critical to success.
How New York’s Customer Experience Office Helps Deliver People-Centered Services
Millions of people rely on public benefits programs to meet their basic needs, but outdated systems can make it difficult for families to access support. As states work to modernize public services, people-centered design offers a promising approach. Understanding how states translate principles into practice is essential for policymakers and administrators to create more effective public benefits systems.
This case study, part of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality’s People-Centered Digital Benefits Project, highlights how the state of New York’s Office of Customer Experience is transforming service delivery by embedding customer-centered design across state agencies. This brief explores the leadership structures, community partnerships, and human-centered design practices that helped New York redesign Medicaid renewals, modernize WIC outreach, and streamline child care assistance – offering lessons and practical strategies for other states.
Building Public Capacity to Deliver People-Centered Services: A Case Study of Massachusetts
Millions of Americans rely on public benefits to meet daily needs, yet unnecessary barriers and outdated technology too often make accessing help a struggle. GCPI’s People-Centered Digital Benefits Project highlights state innovations for modernizing benefits delivery systems to meet people’s needs.
Massachusetts offers a particularly powerful example of people-centered public benefits modernization. In this case study, Visiting Fellow Andrés Argüello profiles the creative, multi-pronged effort of the Massachusetts Digital Service to build public-sector capacity across state government. Massachusetts is helping state agencies improve their digital services and ensuring that the people designing and overseeing delivery of digital benefits are the same people who hear from residents, spot system failures, and are held accountable for fixing them.
What’s At Stake if Congress Lets the Enhanced ACA Premium Tax Credits Expire?
Without action from Congress, subsidies that keep health insurance premiums affordable for millions will expire at the end of 2025. Expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits would push health care out of reach for millions, roll back progress toward health equity, and destabilize the health care system. Families with low incomes, particularly Black and Latinx families, and people at risk of losing Medicaid would be hit the hardest. This analysis highlights what’s at risk for families, health equity, and the broader health care system.
Work Requirements Are Unworkable
Work requirements in public benefits programs don’t help people work. They block access to food, health care, and housing assistance, making families and local economies worse off. This brief illustrates how work reporting requirements fail to increase work while straining state resources and imposing harmful and costly burdens on all. The brief also provides an overview of better alternatives that would be more effective at supporting employment and reducing poverty.
Four Ways To Prevent Unrepayable Debt & Increase Opportunity for Parent PLUS Borrowers
Postsecondary education is more than just a pathway to a degree—for many parents, it is a dream for their children’s future. Yet the soaring costs of higher education have made this dream increasingly unattainable, forcing families to rely on risky borrowing options like the Federal Direct Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students (Parent PLUS). Parent PLUS disproportionately saddles low-income parents and parents of color with immense, often unrepayable debt. Parents can face wage garnishment or risk losing a significant source of income—part of their Social Security benefits. This system can warp the promise of postsecondary education into an intergenerational burden. This brief proposes four recommendations to improve the Parent PLUS program and help ensure students and their parents are not driven into debt-burdened poverty to access higher education.
Census Accuracy: Five Key Results & Trends Explained
An accurate census ensures fair political representation and distribution of over $2 trillion in federal funds to states and local governments each year. But certain communities–including Black and Hispanic/Latino communities, low-income households, recent immigrants, and people with disabilities–are regularly undercounted. This brief, the third in a three-part series on census accuracy, provides a summary of key results and trends in accuracy from the 2020 Census and prior censuses.
Census Accuracy: Key Concepts Explained
An accurate census ensures fair political representation and distribution of over $2 trillion in federal funds to states and local governments each year. But certain communities–including Black and Hispanic/Latino communities, low-income households, recent immigrants, and people with disabilities–are regularly undercounted. This brief, the first in a three-part series on census accuracy, explains the fundamental concepts needed to interpret the accuracy of census data; such as net and gross accuracy and differential undercounts.
Census Accuracy: Key Methods Explained
An accurate census ensures fair political representation and distribution of over $2 trillion in federal funds to states and local governments each year. But certain communities–including Black and Hispanic/Latino communities, low-income households, recent immigrants, and people with disabilities–are regularly undercounted. This brief, the second in a three-part series on census accuracy, describes the Bureau’s evaluation methods: Demographic Analysis and the Post-Enumeration Survey.