文章基本信息

标题：Communicating amounts in terms of commonly used budgeting periods increases intentions to claim government benefits
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作者：Wendy De La Rosa ; Abigail B. Sussman ; Eric Giannella 等
期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2022
卷号：119
期号：37
DOI：10.1073/pnas.2205877119
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Significance In response to rising child poverty, in 2021, the Biden administration sent direct cash transfers to families through the expanded child tax credit (CTC). However, millions of low-income families did not automatically receive their CTC and needed to actively claim it. Policymakers have tried to reach out to this low-income population, highlighting that they could receive up to $3,600 per year for each child. The current work demonstrates that this messaging strategy may be suboptimal. Using common budgeting periods (e.g., $300 a month) to describe the CTC benefit amounts increased CTC claiming intentions relative to the status quo. Millions of eligible families did not claim their 2021 expanded child tax credit (CTC), collectively forgoing billions of dollars. To address this problem, many policymakers focused on increasing awareness of the CTC by highlighting that families could receive up to $3,600 a year per child. However, people rarely budget on a yearly basis. We propose that communicating the CTC benefit amount in terms of commonly used budgeting periods (e.g., $300 a month) instead of uncommonly used budgeting periods (e.g., $3,600 a year) could increase interest in claiming the CTC. Two large-scale field experiments ( n = 16 , 696 ) among low-income individuals support this account. Using common (vs. uncommon) budgeting periods to describe CTC benefit amounts increased CTC claiming intentions by 16 to 26%. A third large-scale field experiment ( n = 14 , 178 ) demonstrated that encouraging people to consider different budgeting periods moderated these effects. These results suggest that communicating amounts in terms of common budgeting periods is a simple, cost-effective way to stimulate interest in claiming government benefits.
关键词：enbudgetingincomegovernment benefitspublic policy