Some families living in the U.S. struggle to access vital services that are intended to help them. Whether it’s health care, housing assistance, or unemployment benefits, many find themselves tangled in red tape, unable to receive the support they need due to the difficulty of navigating complex bureaucratic systems. These obstacles—or administrative burdens—can adversely affect people’s lives, exacerbating inequality and undermining the very programs that aim to assist those in need.
Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan, faculty at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy and co-founders of the Better Government Lab, address this issue in a new article published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. They offer a comprehensive framework for understanding how administrative burdens impede access to essential social safety nets and other public goods and provide policymakers with the tools to identify and ultimately reduce these barriers.
At the heart of this framework, Herd and Moynihan highlight three primary costs that citizens face when trying to access public services:
- The time and effort required to understand how to access government services is known as “learning costs.”
- Then they face compliance costs: filling out forms, providing documentation, or attending interviews requires additional time and energy, further imposing a significant burden on people.
- Finally, psychological costs, or the mental and emotional toll of dealing with uncertainty and frustration with the bureaucratic systems, can be the greatest barrier to seeking assistance. Although these costs are often small or isolated, they can have large effects and accumulate over time, exacerbating existing inequalities. These costs can affect eligible individuals’ willingness to even apply for safety-net benefits, as well as impact the experience of applying for, renewing, and using safety net programs.
Herd and Moynihan argue that although administrative burdens can reduce government costs, they discourage demand for services or limit eligibility, undermining social safety net programs leaving many without support, and worsening health and well-being in the short- and long-term. Because these programs disproportionately benefit children, the elderly, and the disabled, imposing administrative burdens implies worse outcomes for populations most in need.
The administrative burden framework encourages policymakers to view these frictions as harmful to program goals and people’s well-being, urging a re-evaluation of public service design and delivery.
Attention to these issues has grown with recognition of the link between administrative burden and inequality. With this framework, Herd and Moynihan aim to provide key lessons on program design, such as state actions that worsen burdens and the role of technology.
They write, “Bureaucracies have traditionally had few incentives to understand how they impose costs on members of the public. Creating leadership momentum, a policy infrastructure, and a set of tools to allow them to do so can help address this problem.”
>>Read the full article published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives here.
About the Better Government Lab
The Better Government Lab (BGL) is a joint research center of Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. The BGL evaluates what works in government—generating credible evidence to increase government effectiveness and make public services and programs more accessible.
Pamela Herd is the Carol Kakalec Kohn Professor of Social Policy, and Don Moynihan is the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
