Take Action on Benefits Cliffs

This site is a project of Leap Fund, because we wished this had existed when we started doing research.

What You Can Do About Benefits Cliffs

  • Support legislation to gather more data, increase income thresholds, and remove asset limitations, for public benefits (catch up on the U.S. House Committee on Rules hearing from October 2021, benefits cliff taskforce legislation in PA and NY, the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act, and Florida’s CHIP policy adjustment)

  • Test your knowledge about benefits cliff, and public benefits overall, through our quiz

  • Head over to Leap Fund to learn about our programs to help organizations address benefits cliffs & get in touch to discuss further

  • Workplace awareness to get curious about WHY a worker might turn down a raise or additional hours

  • Review strategies for different stakeholders for ideas on addressing benefit cliffs in your work, by Benefits Cliff Community Lab

  • If you’re working on benefits cliff related issues, let us know who you are, and what you’re up to - we’re happy to link arms with the experts and advocates we’re in communication with across the country

Contact Us.

 

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The “Despondency Trap”

“If government is unresponsive or belligerent, people may lower their expectations, and reluctantly accept the status quo. This 'despondency trap' perpetuates a negative feedback loop. Only when people see responsive governance or successful activism, do they come to believe they can change politics, and relentlessly mobilize. We have a global challenge: to understand how societies overcome negative feedback loops, and generate hope for reform.”

Read more from researcher Alice Evans, who recommends four works that illuminate what she has called "despondency trap"—the inaction that can result from observing unresponsive institutions in the midst of widespread social ills—and how to overcome it.