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While social security has contributed to the dramatic decline in poverty among older Americans over the last 40 years, certain groups of older Americans, particularly those who are unmarried, continue to have high poverty rates. The current social security system, which links non-earnings-related benefits to marriage, fails to protect some of the most vulnerable older Americans. This article presents a range of options, both inside and outside of the social security system, to address this problem. While most policy solutions focus on altering social security, there are solutions outside of the social security system. This article considers both the pitfalls and possibilities of poverty reduction policies both inside and outside of social security.

We examine changes in administrative burden in U.S. social safety net programs, or the negative encounters with the state that people experience when trying to access and use the benefits for which they are eligible. Existing theories equate targeted safety net policies, which sharply limit eligibility, as compared to universal policies, which have more expansive eligibility, with increased administrative burden. The past 30 years, however, tell a more complicated story. While overall burdens have declined in most targeted programs, there is evidence of increasing inequality regarding who faces these burdens. We trace the cause to three factors: (1) expansions in targeted programs, like Medicaid, gave states more administrative control, which increased both geographic and racial disparities in administrative burden; (2) delivering benefits through the tax system created more burdens for low-income populations compared to high-income populations; and (3) a growing reliance on private providers to deliver benefits and services created higher burdens for low-income populations to navigate.

Over the past 15 years, political science has paid increasing attention to the feedback effects of policy—the idea that the design of policies has profound effects on how citizens experience government and understand their role in the polity. One concept that is perfectly placed to explain how citizens experience administrative rules is red tape. But even as an impressive empirical scholarship on red tape has grown in recent years, it has focused almost exclusively on organizational actors rather than citizens. This article ties the red tape concept into a policy feedback framework. The authors argue that administrative rules frequently exert significant and unjustified compliance burden that restrict access to political and social rights. Furthermore, such burdens have equity implications, because they are often disproportionately experienced by disadvantaged groups. These propositions are illustrated using examples from welfare state and election policies in the United States.

Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- About the Authors -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Understanding Administrative Burden -- 2. The Resurgence of Burdens in Voting: Race, Burdens, and Access to Political Rights -- 3. False Claims and Targeted Burdens: The Case of Abortion Restrictions -- 4. The Affordable Care Act: Federalism as a Source of Burdens -- 5. Negotiating the Medicare Maze -- 6. Bipartisan Fixes and Partisan Blame: Cycles of Burdens in SNAP -- 7. Mending Medicaid: The Politics of Shifting Burdens at the State Level -- 8. The Earned Income Tax Credit: Benefiting Business by Reducing Burdens on the Working Poor -- 9. Social Security: How the Biggest Bookkeeping Organization in the World Banished Burdens -- 10. Toward an Evidence-Based Approach to Administrative Burden -- Notes -- References -- Index