Benefits and services for low-income families have received increased attention from policymakers in recent years. This is due in part to elevated federal spending in the wake of the deep recession of 2007-2009. The federal government, sometimes in partnership with state governments and local entities, provides an array of economic assistance to persons and families with low income. There are various ways to identify these "need-tested" programs and the individuals who are eligible for and served by them. However, it is more challenging to identify how these programs interact with each other and how they cumulatively provide benefits to families and individuals. There is no single data source that identifies all need-tested benefits for which individuals and families are eligible or those they actually receive. One way to analyze the interaction of need-tested benefits is to look at case studies, which create hypothetical families and present a suite of benefits and services for which those families would be eligible under program rules. For example, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysis estimated that in 2014, a single mother of two children, working all year, full-time at the minimum wage could receive almost $9,000 in combined benefits from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). However, such case study analyses are limited because their hypothetical families do not reflect the wide variation in characteristics and circumstances of actual families. They typically assume that families receive all the benefits for which they are eligible, which is not the case in reality. Further, they sometimes assume that families receive benefits for a full year, though many families are financially needy for only part of a year and receive benefits for only some months as their circumstances change. This report takes a different approach to exploring the interaction of need-tested benefits. It uses data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, along with microsimulation modeling, to explore individuals' and families' eligibility and benefit receipt. The report uses the same data source as, and methods similar to, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in 2015 (U.S. Government Accountability Office, Federal Low-Income Programs, Multiple Programs Target Diverse Populations and Needs , GAO 15-516, July 2015). The GAO report describes federal programs for people with low incomes, examines selected household characteristics of people in poverty, examines the poverty status and household characteristics of selected programs' recipients, and discusses the research on how selected programs may affect incentives to work. This report complements the information in the GAO report, providing further analysis of benefit receipt from specific need-tested programs. Specifically, this report provides information on eligibility and benefit receipt among individuals and households in 2012 from nine major need-tested programs for which adequate data were available, listed in the order of the amount of their FY2012 federal obligations: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); Supplemental Security Income (SSI); housing assistance provided through the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, the public housing program, and the project-based rental assistance program (collectively referred to as "housing assistance"); Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC); special supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); cash assistance from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant; Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF); and Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). This report is organized around and addresses six questions that may help inform policy discussions about the future of selected need-tested benefits. The six questions and key findings related to them are presented below in Table 1 . While the federal government supports a number of need-tested benefit programs, uniform data on eligibility, participation, and benefits across programs are generally available only from household surveys. However, respondents from those surveys tend to under-report receipt of need-tested assistance. Thus, this report combines information from a Census household survey with estimates from a microsimulation model, the third version of the Transfer Income Model (TRIM3). The need-tested benefit programs examined in this report are limited to nine cash or in-kind transfer programs and tax provisions for which eligibility, benefit receipt, and benefit amounts are estimated by TRIM3. TRIM3 is a microsimulation model for government benefit receipt that is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and maintained at the Urban Institute. TRIM3 combines administrative data on program rules with survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey. Simulations conducted with TRIM3 attempt to correct for some limitations of the underlying survey data, such as under-reporting of certain benefits in the ASEC. TRIM3 uses data from the ASEC to estimate the number of people eligible for benefits from selected need-tested programs. For most programs, TRIM3 estimates actual benefit receipt based on the number of people federal agencies report as receiving benefits and the probabilities that an eligible person receives benefits. An exception to this general method is the refundable tax credits. The information on the ASEC identifies fewer tax filers eligible for the EITC and the ACTC than claimed these credits on their federal income tax returns. Therefore, the TRIM3 estimates of people receiving these tax credits are set equal to the number that are identified as eligible for them on the ASEC. Thus, in these estimates there are fewer tax filers and there is a shortfall in aggregate credits for the EITC and the ACTC compared to what is claimed on federal tax returns. TRIM3, like all models, is subject to its own limitations. Appendix A provides detailed information on the methodology used to develop the estimates in this report, including data limitations and key assumptions. The estimates presented in this report were derived using ASEC and TRIM3 data for calendar year 2012. Readers should be aware that estimates in this report may not match administrative data for several reasons, including the following: The estimates in this report reflect annual measures of income, program participation, and benefit amounts. Thus, the estimates may not match administrative data, which commonly report average monthly, rather than annual, participation and benefit amounts. The estimates measure poverty using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), rather than the official poverty measures. The SPM differs from the official poverty measures in several ways, including its use of a broader definition of the family unit. It also measures net income available to meet a family's non-medical needs. From gross income (including the value of government "in-kind" benefits), the SPM subtracts taxes paid, work expenses, child support payments for children outside the household, and out-of-pocket medical expenses. The estimates present benefit amounts using a common family unit. TRIM3 estimates benefits based on the filing unit used in each program and, generally, assigns a per-person benefit amount to members of that filing unit or a benefit amount to the head of the filing unit. For this analysis, persons and their benefits are grouped into a family unit based on that used for the SPM. This single definition of "family" allows analysis of eligibility and benefit receipt across all programs in a comparable manner, which would otherwise not be possible. Readers should also be aware that the "benefit amounts" in this report reflect the estimated dollar value of aid received by individuals and families. However, a large share of need-tested benefits is paid in forms other than cash (e.g., medical, food, housing, and child care cost assistance). In theory, a dollar in benefits received as cash is worth a dollar. A recipient who receives cash assistance can choose what goods and services to purchase with that dollar or whether to save all or part of it. On the other hand, a recipient may value a dollar received in noncash form (medical, food, or housing assistance) differently from a dollar in cash. This is because noncash benefits are not "fungible"—they must be used for a particular type of good or service. Policy analysts have developed several different methods for determining the value of noncash benefits such as medical, food, and housing assistance. However, it is beyond the scope of this report to analyze the relative value of such benefits to any given family or to assess whether receipt of such benefits measurably improves family well-being. Medicaid is the largest need-tested program in terms of federal spending. The $270.9 billion spent on Medicaid in FY2012 exceeded the total amount of federal spending for all of the nonmedical need-tested programs examined in this report. Medicaid is an entitlement program that finances the delivery of primary and acute care health services, as well as long-term services and supports. Medicaid is not included in the central analysis of this report. Rather, it is discussed separately (in Appendix B ) for several reasons: TRIM3 did not include estimates of Medicaid enrollment and the value of benefits for 2012. This report focuses on receipt of need-tested benefits in 2012. However, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) made substantial changes to Medicaid eligibility, which became effective in 2014. Thus, the picture of Medicaid today and in future years might be significantly different from that of 2012. While there are conceptual and technical issues in estimating the "value" to families and individuals of all noncash benefits (including food and housing), the valuation of health care benefits is particularly challenging. Because of these issues, topics discussed in this report, such as eligible population, enrollees, and percentage of eligible individuals actually enrolled in a program, are addressed separately for Medicaid in Appendix B . This report examines benefit receipt from nine major need-tested benefit programs; they are listed in the report's introduction and discussed in more detail in Table 2 , below.