Modifying income reporting on benefits applicants — Evidence from single-income households

What is the agency priority?

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is America’s largest nutrition program. In Fiscal Year 2023, SNAP provided an average of nearly $200 a month in food assistance to 1 in 8 Americans. To receive those benefits, individuals apply on behalf of their household with their local county or state SNAP office. SNAP applications can be long and burdensome to complete, meaning applicants may struggle to make it through the process to receive benefits for which they are eligible. Improving the delivery of government services, including programs such as SNAP, is a core priority of the President’s Management Agenda.

What did we evaluate?

We collaborated with Code for America (CfA) to analyze data from an evaluation that they designed and fielded. The aim of the evaluation was to make it easier for SNAP applicants to report their income on a “digital assister” version of the application, designed by CfA.

Questions about income on forms and applications may be especially difficult for applicants to answer, for example, if they are paid an hourly wage but a form asks for a monthly salary. CfA modified the income reporting screens shown to applicants completing the digital assister SNAP application to identify the most effective set of income reporting options (including hourly pay and hours worked, annual salary, or exact amount from a pay stub). Applicants were randomly shown a set that included some or all of these reporting options.

How did the evaluation work?

CfA designed and implemented the intervention and the evaluation, which fielded for seven weeks from May 8th – June 23rd, 2023. SNAP applicants who made it to the income reporting module during the evaluation (N=32,879) saw one of three screens prompting them to select a method for reporting their income. Applicants were included in the evaluation if they reported having a single job and stable income that did not fluctuate monthly, and if they were not self-employed.

Applicants were randomly assigned to one of three sets of income reporting options: paystub (hourly wage/hours worked or an exact paystub amount), salaried (hourly wage/hours worked or annual salary), or combined (all options). Applicants in all conditions were also provided an option to simply enter in an estimate of monthly income in an open text box.

What did we learn?

We found that 66.2% of all applicants included in the evaluation completed and submitted the SNAP application. Results indicate that providing applicants with different sets of income reporting options did not meaningfully change application completion rates. Across all the reporting options provided, applicants were the most likely to report their income via the hourly wage option.

This evidence suggests that when a form provides at least some relevant options for applicants to report income, small differences in the set of reporting options do not have a meaningful impact on application submission rates. Moreover, we do not find evidence that the introduction of numerous additional options in order to provide “something for everyone” increases submission rates.

Verify the upload date of our analysis plan on GitHub.