Estimating and Improving CalWORKs (TANF) Cross-Enrollment among CalFresh (SNAP) Participants

• In Event: New Approaches to Measuring Poverty, Well-Being, and Program Enrollment

Abstract

CalWORKs, a California welfare program partially funded by federal TANF grants, offers cash assistance and services to families in need. Existing research shows that cash assistance programs for families with children can improve food sufficiency, infant health, educational attainment, and life-expectancy, and reduce material hardship and child welfare involvement – interrupting generational cycles of poverty without substantially reducing work effort. However, whether CalWORKs delivers these impacts depends largely on whether eligible families enroll and stay in the program.

In this paper, we make two contributions to the literature on the take-up of U.S. safety net programs. First, we develop a novel approach to estimate the CalWORKs “cross-enrollment rate” among the CalFresh (SNAP) population, or the share of CalWORKs-eligible CalFresh participants that are enrolled in CalWORKs. We conduct an individual-level eligibility simulation using administrative CalFresh data and estimate the state-wide cross-enrollment rate to be 41.5%. Out of about 2 million CalFresh individuals who we estimate to be eligible for CalWORKs, about 850,000 are enrolled – meaning that over 1 million individuals are both a) connected to the California safety net and b) likely eligible for yet unenrolled in CalWORKs.

Second, we use the results of our eligibility simulation to target and experimentally evaluate a low-cost messaging campaign to 472,900 CalFresh families that are likely eligible for CalWORKs but unenrolled. We sent one text or email to each family, encouraging them to apply for CalWORKs. To isolate the causal effect of targeted outreach, we staggered message delivery and compared outcomes between families randomly assigned to early and later message cohorts.

We find that messaged families were 20% more likely to apply for CalWORKs (1.91% vs. 1.59%), and 14% more likely to be successful to enroll (0.64% vs. 0.56%). CDSS enrolled these families with little additional cost, spending $1.37 per application submitted and $5.47 per family enrolled. Furthermore, we validated our eligibility simulation by examining the outcomes of CalWORKs applications in the period during and after outreach. Applicants that we flagged as eligible for CalWORKs were 44% more likely to be approved than other applicants and were 43% less likely to be denied for eligibility reasons than other applicants. However, messaging is not enough to close the participation gap. This intervention only enrolled 0.08% of the eligible population. In-reach messaging is a successful way to enroll some families into the program, so CDSS will continue to conduct similar messaging campaigns. However, to close the cross-enrollment gap, higher touch interventions that reduce administrative burden for families are likely needed.

Authors

• Joaquin Carbonell, State of California
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Stephanie Peng, California Department of Social Services
  Presenting Author