Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Many families, despite need and eligibility, have their federal cash assistance benefits terminated for failure to complete program recertification paperwork in a timely fashion. This project aimed to ease the psychological frictions by designing and sending an instructional reminder letter based on behavioral insights to families recertifying for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Based on a randomized controlled trial (n = 3,539) in Washington, DC, we find that sending a behaviorally-informed reminder letter increased the number of families who maintained their TANF participation by 14 percent. Further, we offer suggestive evidence that anchoring people to a deadline month may be sufficient to overcome procrastination without creating the compliance challenges of anchoring them to a specific day. Adopting the most effective letter for all recertifying families in DC would result in 766 more families continuing their TANF participation uninterrupted each year.