Administrative Burdens and Inequality

This thesis examines how administrative burdens – the costs and frictions people experience when accessing essential services and interacting with institutions – impact people’s everyday lives and decision-making, focusing on distributive consequences. While there is a growing literature on administrative burdens, most evidence is based on policy case studies in specific contexts and populations, hence little is known about cumulative experiences of burdens in daily life, their distribution in society, and how people make decisions when facing burdens. Chapter 1 provides a detailed overview of the thesis and its contributions. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are based on three independent studies using original survey data from 2,243 participants. The survey measures experiences of administrative burdens in everyday life, accounting for time-use and well-being during administrative tasks across ten domains (e.g. tax, government benefits, children, health). It also measures intra-household dynamics such as self-assessed responsibility for tasks in the household. In addition, the survey includes a choice experiment. Chapter 2 is the first study to document everyday administrative experiences. It shows that administrative tasks are a significant part of everyday life, with time and well-being costs that vary by domain. Government benefits are especially costly. The study also finds evidence of distributive effects. Participants with health or financial issues are more likely to engage in salient tasks, such as benefits, but less likely to engage in longer-term tasks, such as savings and retirement. They also experience higher well-being costs, especially during salient tasks. Chapter 3 shows that there is a gender distribution of burdens in the household. While there is no gender difference in total administrative time-use, there are differences in time-use and responsibility for specific domains. Women focus on care work, health, and routine household management. Men focus on long-term financial tasks. Being the primary earner does not fully explain this distribution. Women report lower well-being in all domains (except children), especially financial domains; this is partly explained by their higher subjective time pressure. Chapter 4 tests how administrative burdens affect decision-making using a survey experiment. Participants are shown scenarios with varying levels of burden. They report being significantly less likely to complete tasks when the burden is high. Older participants and those with health or financial issues are more likely than others to claim a government benefit when the burden is low, but they are more negatively impacted by higher burdens (but not always significantly so). Hence survey experiments can help pre-test policies for potentially regressive burdens. Overall, the thesis contributes new methods and evidence to better understand administrative burdens and inequality. Chapter 5 concludes with directions for future research, such as measuring experiences of administrative burdens in daily life across countries, and testing how these experiences are related to individual attitudes about government.