Going back many years, Federal and state welfare programs support those with low incomes with a variety of different programs ranging from child care to food assistance.

Those programs’ benefits scale back as a person’s income rises. Unfortunately, there has been no clear guidance on how to do this without hurting work incentives.  That can make it frustrating for those individuals who want to work harder to get ahead.

As income rises, each program reduces benefits along a different downward path. Some are gentle slopes. Others flatten and then drop off like a cliff at certain income levels.  Still others appear like jagged mountain trails.  This makes it extremely difficult for ordinary people to predict what will happen when they get a raise, especially in combination with each other.

Across the country, various organizations have created benefits calculators that can be helpful for policy analysts, with color-coded bar and line graphs that show the hazards and disincentives of these programs, under different scenarios.  But these calculators can be very confusing for those without a background in statistics.

To learn more about the benefits cliff, check out this interactive microsite.

These include changes to food stamps (SNAP), child care assistance, housing choice vouchers and WIC benefits along with taxes, and the earned income tax credit.  (Medicaid is excluded from our calculations.)

Individuals who want to better understand and predict what a wage increase might mean for them.

Employers who want to better understand challenges faced by some of their employees. Without delving into employees’ private lives, they can still develop menus of alternatives to a wage increases in order to lower turnover and increase productivity.

Policy analysts, academics, government staff and elected politicians who can better understand — on a practical level — how federal and state benefits policies combine to undermine American citizens’ incentives to work. Long term, this calculator could change the conversation because it makes this problem easier to understand for more people.

• If you have a question about The Benefits Cliff Calculator, contact [email protected].
• If you have a question about the following public benefits: FNS (Food and Nutrition Services), and/or Childcare Subsidies contact CONTACT NEEDED.
• If you have a question about WIC (Women, Infancts, and Children), contact CONTACT NEEDED
• If you have a question about Housing Choice Vouchers, contact CONTACT NEEDED.

Yes, the privacy of your personal information is our highest priority.

The purpose of the Benefits Cliff Calculator (The Calculator) is to help people in our community better understand the Benefits Cliff and how a change in earned income might affect an individual of family’s overall income if they are receiving public benefits. We approach the privacy of your personal information with the highest possible level of seriousness; personally identifiable information submitted through use of The Calculator will not be shared with any outside group or entity for any purpose. The privacy policy outlined below provides transparency about the categories of data collected by this site and how that data is used.

If you have questions regarding the privacy of personal data collected through The Calculator, please contact [email protected].

The Calculator collects two types of information from users: anonymous and personally-identifiable.

• Anonymous Information: the majority of the information collected by The Calculator is anonymous. This includes responses about types of benefits received, income level, and household composition (as examples). Answers to these questions cannot be used to identify a user individually. These responses are used to 1) inform users on how changes in earned income may affect their overall income and 2) responses across many users may be aggregated into reports for community groups to use in important planning and discussions around mitigating the harmful affects of the benefits cliff locally and nationally. In such cases, no information will ever be used in a way that makes it possible for any user to be identified personally.
• Personally Identifiable Information: some questions in The Calculator could potentially be used to identify a user personally (such as email address, and certain demographic questions such as ZIP code or race/ethnicity). This information is handled with the highest possible care and will only ever be used to 1) provide a copy of a user’s outputs from use of The Calculator via email (in the case of email address) or 2) to provide important insights about who is participating in use of the calculator (in the case of demographic questions such as race/ethnicity or ZIP code, as examples). Reports bases on demographic usage of The Calculator will never be shared with any outside group or agency unless there are sufficient numbers of participants to ensure that no single participant can be identified personally.

Who administers the data submitted through use of the calculator?

The Calculator is hosted at ForsythFutures.org and Forsyth Futures is the administrator of all data submitted through use of The Calculator. Forsyth Futures is a registered 501(c)(3) organization that provides action-oriented data analysis and reporting services to organizations within Forsyth County, North Carolina.

The security of personal data submitted through use of The Calculator is our highest priority; Forsyth Futures has taken necessary steps to ensure that data submitted through use of the calculator is secure and cannot be accessed by outside groups, agencies, or individuals. 

For more information about Forsyth Futures visit ForsythFutures.org/about or email [email protected].

Agreement

By using The Calculator, you acknowledge that you have read, understand, and agree to this privacy policy.