Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project draws on the principles of behavioral economics to design solutions for issues related to the operations, implementation, and efficacy of social service programs and policies administered by the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The BIAS team designs behavioral interventions to address hypothesized bottlenecks and evaluates them using random assignment. This paper will present the design and findings from a behavioral intervention developed in collaboration with the Los Angeles Department of Public Social Services (LA DPSS).

In 2013, California ended a welfare-to-work exemption for some TANF families with young children. LA DPSS began scheduling appointments with formerly exempt parents to bring them into the welfare-to-work program and engage them in program activities. However, despite several contacts with the parents, only about half participated in the meetings. The BIAS team tested sending additional, behaviorally informed materials to participants one week before the reengagement appointment. The team designed two different notices that employed behavioral techniques: one highlighted the losses participants might experience by not attending the appointment and the other highlighted the benefits they might gain by attending. The notices were written using simplified language related to key appointment information and included a tool to help participants plan to attend the appointment. The notices were accompanied by personalized “sticky-notes” from their case managers, intended to build a sense of reciprocity to attend the appointment.

We found that the additional behavioral outreach increased the percentage of program group members who took action and became positively engaged 30 days after their scheduled appointment by 3.6 percentage points, a statistically significant difference. The loss notice, when compared with no additional outreach, increased positive engagement at 30 days by 4.4 percentage points, while the gain notice, when compared with no additional outreach, did not produce a statistically significant impact at 30 days. These results provide evidence that individuals are loss averse, preferring avoiding losses to acquiring gains. This intervention was added to a fairly intensive campaign to increase engagement among TANF recipients. Given that this was one additional piece of mail on top of other attempts to reach participants and convey the importance of participating, it is notable that it helped participants to engage earlier than they would have otherwise.