Research SNAP

I provide a descriptive portrait of the trends in participation and composition of households receiving assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey for the calendar years 1979-2024. I first present estimates of participation overall and by socioeconomic characteristics of the householder. The share of households receiving SNAP increased from 8% to 10% over the sample period, with the most notable increases in participation rates among householders with some college education or less, those with a disability, those without children or living alone, and those households with gross family incomes placing them in near poverty. I then focus on the composition of households receiving SNAP in comparison to the overall population of households, including the share of householders by age, race/ethnicity, education attainment, nativity, disability, employment, and income. The heads of households receiving SNAP have become more educated over time with those with at least some college education tripling to 40%, and they have become older as the share of heads age 60 and older has doubled since the Great Recession to become the largest share by age. Households with SNAP are smaller today than in the past, with growth in 1-person households coming at the expense of those with 4 or more people. There has been a secular decline in the share of households with SNAP with family incomes in poverty, meaning a growing share are those with incomes two to three times the federal poverty level. This is consistent with rising participation rates of those with disabilities and those age 60 and older, each of whom is exempt from the gross-income test for eligibility. Despite the aging of householders with SNAP, the share of households with labor-market earnings has held steady at about 60%, and earnings comprises the largest and growing share of household disposable incomes.

SNAP is the cornerstone food assistance program in the United States and has been shown to reduce the risk of food insecurity. Most research on the causal effect of SNAP on food insecurity relies on the 12-month food insecurity scale along with usage of SNAP at any point during the year. However, recent social surveys ask about experiences with food insecurity in the 30 days prior to the survey. In this paper we examine whether similar protective effects of SNAP against food insecurity are obtained whether using the 30-day or 12-month food insecurity scale using the December Supplement of the Current Population Survey for 2002-2019. Results indicate comparable average treatment effects of SNAP in mitigating food insecurity across both 30-day and 12-month reference periods.

Previous research has shown that investments during the early childhood period are likely to have the highest social return. We use administrative data from Virginia to document participation in SNAP and TANF among children born between 2007- 2010 during their early childhood period, which we define here as birth to age six. We find that participation in SNAP is about four times greater than participation in TANF and that most children begin their connection with the social welfare system in their birth year. Children who participate earlier in life tend to stay connected over a longer portion of the early childhood period, although SNAP participation peaks around ages 3-4 while TANF peaks earlier, around ages 2-3. In terms of joint participation, most households on SNAP do not receive TANF and about 1 in 12 children on TANF do not receive SNAP. Finally, over the early childhood period, on average, just under 1 in 2 children in Virginia participated in SNAP or TANF but demography plays an important role in this process: The level of cumulative receipt is 1 in 4 among White children, 1 in 2 among Hispanic children but rises to 3 in 4 for Black children; cumulative receipt is also higher in nonmetropolitan counties than metropolitan counties. This study documents the reach of the existing social welfare system during the early childhood period, underlining the importance of race and space in 21st century America.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act waived work requirements nationally in 2010 and broadened waiver eligibility in subsequent years for Able-Bodied Adults without Dependents (ABAWDs) receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) bene ts. From 2011 to 2017, many states voluntarily imposed work requirements, while other areas became ineligible for waivers because of improved economic conditions. Using data from the American Community Survey from 2010 to 2017, I analyze the influence of work requirements on employment and SNAP participation for able bodied adults without disabilities (ABAWDs). I find that work requirements increased employment for ABAWDs and also significantly decreased SNAPparticipation.

Administrative data are considered the “gold standard” when measuring program participation, but little evidence exists on the potential problems with administrative records or their implications for econometric estimates. We explore issues with administrative data using the FoodAPS, a unique dataset that contains two different administrative measures of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation as well as a survey-based measure. We first document substantial ambiguity in the two administrative participation variables and show that they disagree with each other almost as often as they disagree with self-reported participation. Estimated participation and misreporting rates can be meaningfully sensitive to choices made to resolve this ambiguity and disagreement. We then explore sensitivity in regression estimates of the associations between SNAP and food insecurity, obesity, and the Healthy Eating Index. The signs remain the same regardless of the SNAP participation measure used, and the coefficient estimates are in most cases not statistically different from each other. However, there are some meaningful differences in the magnitudes of the estimates and their levels of statistical significance. 

Previous literature documents a strong relationship between food insecurity and mental health, and also examines the impact of safety net programs on food insecurity.  However, little is known about the intersection between mental health, safety net participation, and food insecurity. In this research, we use a multi-program safety net calculator (including cash, food, and health insurance programs) and data from the National Health Interview Survey and the Current Population Survey to examine the effects of safety net generosity on food insecurity and mental health for single mother families.  We examine four research questions.  First, does state safety net generosity affect self-reported participation in safety net programs?  Second, does mental health affect participation in safety net programs, conditional on generosity?  Third, does more generous cash and food assistance affect mental health? And finally, how effective is the safety net in reducing food insecurity in the presence of mental health issues? We find that state-level safety net generosity does predict self-reported participation, and that conditional on generosity, those with mental health issues are significantly more likely to participate in safety net programs.  More generous cash and food assistance is protective of maternal mental health, but results are somewhat sensitive to the measure of mental health examined.  Finally, we find no effect of the safety net on 30-day food insecurity.  These results have important implications for the effectiveness of safety net programs for some of the most vulnerable members of society: low-income mothers suffering from mental health challenges and their children. 

We study whether SNAP mediates the effect of food insecurity on future health and healthcare utilization more for the extreme poor (i.e., those with income below 50% of the poverty line) than it mediates the effect for other low-income families (i.e., with incomes between 50% and 200% of the poverty line). We use data for about 23,000 people in the 2011-2012, 2012-2013, and 2013-2014 linked NHIS-MEPS surveys with the measures of food insecurity coming from the NHIS and the measures of SNAP benefits and various health outcomes from the MEPS. We find that SNAP significantly reduces the negative effects of food insecurity on several measures of health and healthcare-related outcomes for nonelderly adults, and that this reduction is often significantly greater for those in extreme poverty. However, we find no significant effects of this type for children. In addition, attempts to control for possible endogeneity of the SNAP effect of interest are unsuccessful because of a lack of strong instruments. Nevertheless, endogeneity of the effect of interest maybe biased downward, strengthening the support of the OLS estimates as valid.

Our research project addressed the question of how well SNAP and the social safety net protects families against the risk of food insecurity and poor health during economic downturns. Previous research has documented the relationship between reductions in family incomes and food insufficiency and has examined the effects of resources that mitigate the effects of income volatility. The U.S. social safety net, including SNAP, exists to mitigate the deleterious effects of swings in family income, particularly among low- and moderate-income households. This work compares outcomes for lower income families and higher income families in response to economic downturns. To the extent that nutritional, food security and food-related health outcomes are unaffected by economic downturns, there is implicit evidence that the social safety net is working to protect economically disadvantaged families.

The food stamp program (SNAP) is one of the most important elements of the social safety net and is the second largest anti-poverty program for children in the U.S. (only the EITC raises more children above poverty). The program varies little across states and over time, which creates challenges for quasi-experimental evaluation. Notably, SNAP benefit levels are fixed across 48 states; but local food prices vary widely, leading to substantial variation in the real value of SNAP benefits. In this study, we leverage time variation in the real value of the SNAP benefit across markets to examine the effects of SNAP on child health. We link panel data on regional food prices and the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, as measured by the USDA’s Quarterly Food at Home Price Database, to restricted-access geo-located National Health Interview Survey data on samples of SNAP-recipient and SNAP-eligible children. We estimate the relationship between the real value of SNAP benefits (i.e., the ratio of the SNAP maximum benefit to the TFP price faced by a household) and children’s health and health care utilization, in a fixed effects framework that controls for a number of individual-level and region characteristics, including non-food prices. Our findings indicate that children in market regions with a lower real value of SNAP benefits utilize significantly less health care, and may utilize emergency room care at increased rates. Lower real SNAP benefits also lead to an increase in school absences but we find no effect on reported health status.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; formerly known as food stamps) can have important impacts that extend beyond its intended aims to improve food security and nutrition, particularly for health and health care use. This project examined the impact of SNAP receipt and benefit level on the health of adults and children using two natural experiments to address selection bias: 1) state policy variation in SNAP in an instrumental variables (IV) analysis; and, 2) the temporary expansion of SNAP benefits and eligibility provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in a difference-in-difference (DD) approach. We used restricted data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) from 2008 to 2014, restricting our sample to persons in SNAP-eligible and low-income SNAP-ineligible households. The IV analysis suggests that SNAP receipt is associated with improved health and reductions in foregone medical care due to affordability among adults and children. However, we find little evidence that ARRA’s temporary benefit increase led to any changes in health or health care use. Whereas SNAP receipt may improve health and health care use for populations close to the eligibility threshold (and thus induced to participate by some policies), the relatively small increase and reduction in SNAP benefits may not have been substantial enough to change health outcomes.