#255 Using Data to Close the Safety Net Participation Gap in NYC

In 2016, Civis Analytics’ Applied Data Science team worked with the Robin Hood Foundation, one of the largest poverty-fighting foundations in New York City, to find out which neighborhoods in New York City were under-participating in two public benefits: SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

In order to help the Robin Hood Foundation figure out how best to target its resources and do outreach through canvassing and community organizing, Civis used Census data from the American Community Survey to identify which areas had a high number of eligible participants who were not claiming benefits.

Civis used models to improve our estimates and bring in additional information about the communities. In this talk, Kelly Kreft, Advik Shreekumar, and Ola Topczewska will discuss how they approached the problem, data and modeling challenges we encountered along the way, and introduce some of the findings from their work.