Does inconvenience explain low take-up? Evidence from unemployment insurance

Avraham Ebenstein and Kevin Stange
Additional contact information
Kevin Stange: Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research, University of Michigan, Postal: Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research, University of Michigan

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2010, vol. 29, issue 1, 111-136

Abstract: Application inconvenience is one popular explanation for why many individuals do not receive the social benefits for which they are eligible. Applications take time and some individuals may decide that the financial benefits do not outweigh these time costs. This paper investigates this explanation using cross-state variation in administrative changes that made applying for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits substantially more convenient over the past decade. We find that the introduction of phone- and Internet-based claiming did not have an appreciable impact on overall UI take-up, nor did it lead to a shift toward recipients that are higher income or likely to be receiving the maximum benefit amount. These findings are inconsistent with a time- and transaction-cost explanation for low take-up, since remote UI claiming is less time intensive. This suggests that reducing application barriers alone may not be an effective tool for increasing program participation. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/pam.20481 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:jpamgt:v:29:y:2010:i:1:p:111-136

DOI: 10.1002/pam.20481

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().