Requiring people to work in order to receive government benefits, such as food stamps, doesn’t work. In fact, the primary effect of these requirements may be to deprive people of help they need, when they need it most.
Not only that, as Anthony Barrows argues in his article this week, these programs are littered with sludge—obstacles placed deliberately in the way of good decision-making. “For example,” Barrows writes, “the Access Arkansas website where clients must report their hours and earnings in order to keep their Medicaid benefits actually closes between 9PM and 7AM—making it nearly impossible for anybody who works during the day to use.” Read more of Barrows’ behavioral case against work requirements, in “Work Requirements Are (Socially) Toxic Sludge.”
Defaults are one of the most well-known and successful examples of a nudge. But all defaults aren’t created equal. This week, Jon Jachimowicz, Shannon Duncan, Elke Weber, and Eric Johnson report on the findings of their recent meta-analysis, which examined 58 defaults studies with over 70,000 participants. It turns out, “Defaults are not the same by default.”
It’s that time of the year again. Yes, the NFL Draft, when America’s professional football teams will waste millions of dollars on bad picks. From the archives, I’ve selected Cade Massey’s piece on why most NFL teams fail at the draft and how they could get better.
Work requirements for anti-poverty programs don’t encourage work. Instead, their principal effect is stripping people of the benefits they rely on to survive.
