Can Auto-Enrollment and Simplified Applications Improve Safety Net Program Take-Up?

Kleinman (2026) studies whether making it easier to sign up for public benefits increases SNAP enrollment among older adults who already receive SSI. She uses American Community Survey data and compares states that adopted a simplified enrollment system to those that did not. Using a difference-in-differences approach, she finds that easier sign-up leads to higher participation. SNAP enrollment rises by about 8–10 percentage points, or roughly 17–24 percent above the starting level. The increase is larger for people more likely to struggle with food, suggesting the policy also helps reach those most in need.

Why This Article Was Selected for The Policy Scientist

This article addresses a central issue in public policy: why eligible individuals fail to access benefits that are already available to them. This question has broad relevance across health care, education, retirement savings, and income support, where participation gaps can undermine program effectiveness. The topic is especially timely given rising attention to administrative design and access in government programs. Kleinman (2026) contributes by examining a real-world policy implemented at scale, extending prior work on program take-up by Currie and others. The data are strong and nationally representative, though limited by self-reporting. The difference-in-differences design supports causal inference, though an experimental approach would further strengthen identification. Findings appear broadly generalizable.

Full Citation and Link to Article

Kleinman, R. (2026). Transaction costs and the take-up of social safety net programs: Evidence from the Combined Application Project. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.70086 

Central Research Question

Kleinman (2026) examines how simplifying the process of enrolling in public benefits affects participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) among elderly recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The central question is whether making enrollment easier—through policies like the Combined Application Project (CAP)—increases take-up among eligible individuals and whether such changes improve the alignment between program participation and need. A secondary question considers which specific features of simplified enrollment, such as automatic enrollment or reduced paperwork, are most effective. The study also evaluates whether these changes disproportionately benefit individuals with a higher likelihood of food insecurity, thereby improving the targeting of benefits.

Previous Literature

The study builds on a large body of work examining why eligible individuals fail to participate in social programs. Earlier research has consistently shown that complexity in application processes reduces participation, with foundational contributions from Currie (2004) and Moffitt (1983). More recent studies, including Finkelstein and Notowidigdo (2019) and Deshpande and Li (2019), have explored how information, assistance, and administrative burdens influence enrollment decisions. However, much of this literature focuses on single programs or researcher-designed interventions rather than real-world policy changes implemented at scale. Kleinman extends this literature by analyzing a policy explicitly designed to simplify enrollment across programs and by examining its effects in a multi-program context. The study also engages with debates about whether simplifying enrollment improves or worsens targeting, a question addressed in prior work by Finkelstein and Notowidigdo (2019) and Dupas et al. (2016), though often outside the SNAP context.

Data

The analysis relies primarily on the American Community Survey (ACS), a large, nationally representative dataset that provides detailed information on income, demographics, and program participation. The sample focuses on elderly SSI recipients, a population that is categorically eligible for SNAP yet exhibits relatively low enrollment rates. The ACS data are supplemented with administrative and policy data, including state-level information on the timing and structure of CAP adoption, as well as data from the USDA SNAP policy database. Additional datasets, such as the Current Population Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation, are used for robustness checks and for constructing measures of predicted food insecurity. The data are comprehensive and allow for detailed analysis across states and over time, though they rely in part on self-reported program participation, which introduces potential measurement error.

Methods

Kleinman employs a difference-in-differences framework to estimate the causal effect of CAP adoption on SNAP enrollment. The primary empirical strategy compares changes in SNAP participation among SSI recipients in states that adopted CAP to changes in states that did not. To strengthen identification, the study uses multiple complementary designs, including comparisons between single and married SSI recipients within adopting states and a triple-difference approach that combines both sources of variation. The analysis incorporates state and year fixed effects, as well as individual-level and state-level controls, to account for observable differences across groups and over time. Recognizing potential limitations of traditional two-way fixed effects models in settings with staggered policy adoption, the study also employs a doubly robust estimator following Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021). These approaches align with contemporary standards in causal inference and are well-suited to the policy context, though the absence of randomized assignment limits the ability to fully eliminate concerns about unobserved confounding.

Findings/Size Effects

The results indicate that simplifying the enrollment process through CAP leads to substantial increases in SNAP participation. Across specifications, the policy increases enrollment by approximately 8 to 10 percentage points from a baseline rate of about 40 percent, corresponding to a relative increase of roughly 17 to 24 percent. These effects emerge quickly following policy adoption and persist over time. The study also finds evidence that the increase in participation is larger among individuals with a higher predicted probability of food insecurity, suggesting that the policy improves the alignment between program participation and need. Additional analyses show that automatic enrollment is particularly effective, outperforming other forms of simplification such as outreach or joint application processes. However, the effectiveness of these features is moderated by access to food retailers, with smaller effects observed in areas where recipients face greater difficulty using benefits. Robustness checks, placebo tests, and alternative sample definitions yield consistent results, reinforcing the reliability of the estimated effects.

Conclusion

Kleinman (2026) provides strong evidence that simplifying the process of enrolling in public benefits can significantly increase participation among eligible individuals, particularly those most in need. By focusing on a large-scale, real-world policy, the study offers insights that extend beyond the specific context of SNAP and SSI, with implications for the design of social programs more broadly. The use of multiple quasi-experimental methods strengthens the credibility of the findings, though future research employing randomized controlled trials could further validate the causal mechanisms. The study contributes to ongoing discussions about how program design influences access and effectiveness, highlighting the importance of administrative structure in shaping policy outcomes.