Transaction Costs and the Take‐Up of Social Safety Net Programs: Evidence From the Combined Application Project
Rosa Kleinman
What the paper says
This paper studies the effect of transaction costs on the take‐up and targeting of social safety net programs in the context of multi‐program enrollment by exploiting the Combined Application Project (CAP), a widespread state‐level policy designed to encourage enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) among elderly recipients of Supplemental Security Income. I show that the CAP increased SNAP take‐up by 8–13 percentage points, or about 17%–24%. The increase was suggestively larger among those with a higher probability of being food insecure. Exploiting heterogeneity in the format of the CAP across states, I find that “auto‐enrollment” most effectively increased SNAP take‐up.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.