Who’s In? Eligibility, Access, and Take-Up in Alaska’s “Universal” Cash Transfer Program

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Street Level Politics (Table 10)

Abstract

Questions of how to count and define a benefit receiving population are central to designing and maintaining social programs — and determining the ultimate impact they have on poverty, mobility, and inequality. In the case of universal programs, the issue is deceptively simple. Indeed, simplifying eligibility, as compared to targeted programs, by broadening it to “everyone” is a major aim and draw of universal programs. But when it comes to implementation, we see that just who is and isn’t a part of “everyone” is not immediately discernible. As an empirical question, the coverage of universal social programs has been overlooked. Prior research on the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend — often pointed to as the most substantial instance of universal basic income in the U.S. — has taken universal coverage as an assumption.
This paper finds that instead there are gaps in coverage, and they have increased over time. I illustrate trends in coverage from 1982 to 2019 and examine more closely the major categories that comprise the excluded: residents who are new to the state, certain categories of immigrants, and people with certain criminal conviction and incarceration records. For each, I review the policy history that led to their exclusion and provide a quantitative estimate of their size as a group. Finally, I discuss access and take-up: are there Alaska residents who are eligible for the PFD but don’t receive it because of administrative burdens or barriers or who simply choose not to? These issues are well theorized in the social policy literature but are harder to document empirically. I produce quantitative estimates of eligible Alaskans who nonetheless don’t receive dividends, and I share data from qualitative interviews illustrating some of the relevant access barriers and reasons for opting out.

Author

• Sarah Reibstein, Rutgers University