Certification and Recertification in Welfare Programs: What Happens When Automation Goes Wrong?

Derek Wu () and Bruce D. Meyer ()
Additional contact information
Derek Wu: University of Virginia
Bruce D. Meyer: University of Chicago

No 16294, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: How do administrative burdens influence enrollment in different welfare programs? Who is screened out at a given stage? This paper studies the impacts of increased administrative burdens associated with the automation of welfare caseworker assistance, leveraging a unique natural experiment in Indiana in which the IBM Corporation remotely processed applications for two-thirds of all counties. Using linked administrative records covering nearly 3 million program recipients, the results show that SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid enrollments fell by 15%, 24%, and 4% one year after automation, with these heterogeneous declines largely attributable to cross-program differences in recertification costs. Earlier-treated and higher-poverty counties experienced larger declines in welfare receipt. More needy individuals were screened out at exit while less needy individuals were screened out at entry, a novel distinction that would be missed by typical measures of targeting which focus on average changes overall. The decline in Medicaid enrollment exhibited considerable permanence after IBM's automated system was disbanded, suggesting potential long-term consequences of increased administrative burdens.

Keywords: welfare programs; automation; take-up; targeting; administrative burdens (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H53 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 85 pages
Date: 2023-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16294.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp16294

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().