MISSED OUR CLIFF EFFECT EVENT?
Check out the Cliff Effect Documentary and the Full Event Recording below!
The Cliff Effect is one of the biggest and most persistent barriers keeping families in poverty.
What is the Cliff Effect?
The Cliff Effect occurs when a pay raise at work triggers a disproportionate loss of government assistance. Even a small raise can “push people off the cliff” when it comes to benefits. Suddenly ineligible for subsidized food, housing, healthcare, or childcare, the family is worse off than before receiving the raise.
CIRCLES USA POLICY PLATFORM
Circles NWA is a chapter of the national Circles USA organization. Circles USA has identified the Cliff Effect as one of the biggest barriers keeping families stuck in poverty
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BENEFIT CLIFFS
Leap Fund is an organization that has “built a benefits cliff coaching program, which includes predicting individualized cliffs, and employers tools, to better understand the scope of the problem, and actually help employees avoid benefits cliffs altogether.” Leap Fund created the benefitscliff.com site in early 2019 because they “saw how much time it took to identify and understand this issue from multiple angles, and to get a broader understanding of the smart people and organizations that have been working in the space well before us.” The goal of their site is to “create a solid base to equip folks to quickly find metrics, studies, and data, as well as understand the policy ramifications, of benefits cliffs."
UNDERSTANDING WHEN AND HOW BENEFIT CLIFFS OCCUR
Partnership with Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
Contact us to learn more about the CLIFF Tools and how to utilize them in your organization!
BENEFIT CLIFFS IN OUR COMMUNITY
The data in this chart is based on a scenario of a single mother with two young children living in Washington County, Arkansas. It was created using data from the CLIFF Policy Database Tool.
SNAP (food assistance) - when this mother increases her pay past $13/hr, she loses access to food assistance benefits.
Free/Reduced Lunches - when this mother increases her pay past $19.50/hr, she will have to start paying full price for her child’s school meals.
Loss of child care subsidy - when this mother increases her pay to $25/hr, the $5,991 she received every year for child care drops to $0, a major cliff.
Housing - In contrast, there is no housing cliff shown on the chart even though her housing benefit decreases to $0 around $16/hr. This is because instead of dropping off abruptly once she reaches an income threshold, section 8 housing is based on a percentage of income and gradually decreases as income increases.
POLICY OPTIONS TO CONSIDER
Moving on Up: Helping Families Climb the Economic Ladder by Addressing Benefits Cliffs
Report from The National Conference of State Legislatures. The NCSL is the bipartisan organization dedicated to serving the lawmakers and staffs of the nation’s 50 states, its commonwealths and territories.