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Are We the Welfare Office? Managing Administrative Burden in a Guaranteed-Income Pilot

Kristin S. Seefeldt et al.

Social Service Review2026https://doi.org/10.1086/739424article
ABDC B
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

Despite increased attention to the phenomenon of administrative burdens, we know less about efforts to minimize these burdens, particularly how those efforts affect frontline staff. This article addresses the gap by analyzing documents gathered and generated by the authors as they implemented a guaranteed-income pilot in Ann Arbor, Michigan, intentionally designed to lessen administrative burdens on applicants. The findings highlight the challenges of putting burden-reducing practices into place and the tensions that emerge, including those between reducing administrative burdens and being accountable for the spending of public dollars. Moreover, we contribute to the literature on administrative burden by uncovering an additional role that administrative burdens can serve—namely, as a device to protect an organization’s professional reputation.

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Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1086/739424

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{kristin2026,
  title        = {{Are We the Welfare Office? Managing Administrative Burden in a Guaranteed-Income Pilot}},
  author       = {Kristin S. Seefeldt et al.},
  journal      = {Social Service Review},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1086/739424},
}

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Are We the Welfare Office? Managing Administrative Burden in a Guaranteed-Income Pilot

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 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.