The Financial Consequences of Being Denied Benefit Access

For helpful comments and suggestions, we thank Francesca Costa, Jason Cook, Julie Cullen, Samuel Dodini, Itzik Fadlon, Eric Giannella, and Jacob Goldin, and seminar participants at Better Government Lab, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and the University of California-San Diego. We thank Vince Dorie and Gwen Rino at Code for America, Peri Weisberg at San Francisco Human Service Agency, and Nikta Akhavan, Erika Brown, Brett Fischer, Huizhi Gong, Gary Gremaux, Jennifer Hogg, Sarah Hoover, Aparna Ramesh and Evan White at California Policy Lab for hosting, documenting, and facilitating access to the University of California Consumer Credit Panel and enabling linkages to administrative SNAP data from Los Angeles and San Francisco. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Russell Sage Foundation for this project, Grant ID Number G-2310-45127, under the program on Social, Political, and Economic Inequality. Min Lee and Katherine Meckel also gratefully acknowledge the receipt of a seed grant from California Policy Lab. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.