Administrative Burdens in the Social Safety Net

Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2025, vol. 39, issue 1, 129-50

Abstract: Administrative burdens shape people's experiences of, and access to, social safety net programs. They can undermine the goals these programs are trying to achieve. Such burdens are the experience of policy implementation as onerous, and arise via learning costs (knowing about the existence of and requirements of public services), compliance costs (time and effort spent dealing with bureaucratic demands, such as paperwork and documentation), and psychological costs (emotional responses to citizen-state interactions). Such frictions can substantially limit eligible peoples' access to public services they want, would benefit from, and are legally entitled to receive. Those with the fewest resources, and the greatest needs, may struggle more to overcome burdens; the frictions thereby reinforcing existing inequality. As a research approach, administrative burden offers an intuitive and accessible way for policy actors and researchers to improve state capacity and the delivery of public services.

JEL-codes: D63 D91 H53 H75 I32 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1257/jep.20231394

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