Recent studies have demonstrated that administrative burdens often reinforce existing social inequalities. However, less attention has been paid to explaining which factors cause variation in people's experience of administrative burden. This article builds upon an emerging body of literature on citizen factors to make two contributions. First, a theoretical framework is constructed to provide a coherent overview of existing economic (cost–benefit analyses and poverty costs) and behavioural explanations (human capital and decision‐making bias) for the unequal distribution of administrative burden. Furthermore, policy feedback is suggested as a possible intermediating variable to understand variations in people's capacity and willingness to engage in state‐citizen interactions and the bigger bite of administrative burden in low‐trust contexts. Second, a mixed method case study of non‐participation in Argentina's conditional cash transfer program is used to illustrate the relevance of the identified explanations prior to state‐citizen interaction.