Research

Much of the evidence about the effects of SNAP on nutrition is based on cross-sectional studies comparing SNAP recipients and eligible non-recipients, and thus potentially biased, even when observables are controlled. There is evidence suggesting SNAP recipients spend more on food than other similar families and that they have higher nutrient availability than others. The lack of good causal evidence is in part due to the many challenges with evaluating what was for most of its life a national program with consistent rules across places, making it impossible to use the most common quasi-experimental estimators. There is also the challenge that any of these comparisons of recipients and non-recipients in standard data sets suffer from misclassification, as SNAP use is underreported. The goal of this paper is to assess the existing state of knowledge about whether SNAP improves health and nutrition outcomes, and if so, which ones and by how much.

This chapter reviews recent theory and empirical evidence regarding the effect of SNAP on food insecurity and replicates the modelling strategies used in the empirical literature. The authors find that recent evidence suggesting an ameliorative effect of SNAP on food insecurity may not be robust to specification choice or data. Most specifications mirror the existing literature in finding a positive association of food insecurity with SNAP participation. Two-stage least squares and control function methods do show that SNAP reduces food insecurity, but effects are not consistent across sub-populations and are not always statistically significant.

The Great Recession and its immediate aftermath have brought increasing attention both to food insecurity among children and to the associated food safety net. This chapter examines how SNAP functions as a component of the broader food assistance safety net for school-age children, focusing on connections between SNAP and the school meal programs at a policy level, as well patterns in children’s participation across programs. Food assistance programs are a mainstay of children’s overall household resources. Nearly half of children used at least one, often more, during any 4-month period; and for an average low-income child, food assistance comprised almost one-fifth of total household food and nonfood resources, a figure that rises to 35 percent of resources among children who participate in all three programs. While there is a substantial degree of overlap among programs, there is nonetheless considerable variation in the ways children access and package programs, both cross-sectionally and over time.

The SNAP program cost one half of one percent, according to a 2013 estimate by Robert Moffitt. For that amount we get a 16 percent reduction in poverty (8 million fewer poor people) after an adjustment for underreporting, based on USDA Administrative data. Moreover we get a 41 percent cut in the poverty gap, which measures the depth of poverty and a 54 percent decline in the severity of poverty, when we add SNAP benefits to Census money incomes and recalculate the official poverty rate.

One in seven Americans received assistance from SNAP in FY 2012, which is a rate 141 percent higher than in FY 2000, but only 59 percent higher than in FY 1980. In this paper, I describe the socioeconomic and policy climate in recent decades that had bearing on SNAP participation, along with a formal empirical analysis of those determinants and detailed simulations of the relative contributions of the economy, policy, and demographics to changes in SNAP participation over time. The results suggest that SNAP is operating effectively as an automatic fiscal stabilizer—nearly 50 percent of the increase in participation from 2007-2011 is due to the weak economy—but policy reforms expanding access and benefit generosity also affected participation, accounting for nearly 30 percent of the increase after the Great Recession. The changing demographics of the American household are helping restrain growth in SNAP.

This research examined VLFS in children among households with foreign-born (FB) mothers compared to US-born mothers through three research questions: Is mother’s foreign-born status (FBS) associated with VLFS in children, and can association be explained by mothers’ socio-demographic characteristics? Are FB mothers more or less likely to receive nutrition or non-nutrition assistance benefits, or work for pay than US-born mothers? Do mothers’ FBS, or protective/risk factors associated with FBS, modify associations of negative economic shocks and hardships with VLFS in children? Data are on approximately 44,000 mother-child (ages<48 Mos.) dyads collected from household surveys administered under a "sentinel surveillance" system over 1998-2012 at teaching hospitals and clinics in seven US cities. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models tested study hypotheses. Mothers' FBS is strongly positively associated with VLFS in children after controlling for available risk and protective factors. FB mothers are less likely to receive SNAP and non-nutrition assistance (TANF, LIHEAP or housing subsidies), but more likely to receive WIC and to be employed than US-born mothers. FB mothers are no more likely to report negative reasons for not receiving SNAP or TANF, or losing jobs or decreasing work hours than US-born, and reported "immigration concerns" rarely. No need/chose not to participate are most frequently reported reasons for not receiving SNAP and TANF; pregnancy/maternity leave and "market conditions" for lost jobs and decreased work hours. Economic shocks and hardships are positively associated with VLFS in children, but Mothers' FBS does not interact with shocks and hardships to modify those associations

Our paper examines the prevalence and determinants of children’s transitions into and out of food insecurity since 2001. We use longitudinally linked data from the Food Security Supplements to the Current Population Surveys to estimate one-year transition probabilities of entry and exit from food insecurity. Our results indicate that child hunger is typically short-lived, but children experiencing very low food security frequently experience multiple consecutive years of food insecurity. We demonstrate large demographic and socioeconomic differences in rates of entry into very low food security and persistence in children's food insecurity. Income and employment shocks are important predictors of child hunger transitions. Finally, we find that the Great Recession increased the likelihood that children entered into and persisted in food insecurity among children.

Survey of Income and Program Participation data are used to investigate the relationship between parenting and children’s very low food security. Parenting is characterized along five domains (emotional outlook, support, education desires, activities with the child excluding meals, and television viewing rules). Food security definitions are obtained from questions in a special SIPP module that are based on the USDA’s core food security module. Graphical evidence indicates that parenting patterns differ distinctly for households experiencing various levels of food insecurity. Descriptive regression evidence suggests that some of the parenting attributes are significantly associated with children’s food insecurity, even controlling for a wide variety of background characteristics. Finally, an event-study framework is used to identify causal effects of parenting on food security outcomes. The overall findings are twofold. First, mothers in food-insecure households have a worse outlook on their parental role and the parent-child relationship. However, the evidence indicates that this is likely either reverse-caused (e.g., maternal depression leads to low family resources) or is a response to the stress of being in a low-resource environment. Second, there is some evidence against rejecting the hypothesis that more supportive (nurturing) parental behavior is protective for children in households experiencing a job layoff of an adult member. This is consistent with supportive parenting playing a causal role in children’s very low food security.

Low- and moderate-income (LMI) households with children often face considerable difficulties in ensuring enough financial resources for an adequate diet. This project investigates the use of financial services and other financial decisions parents make that may affect the risk of very low food security and food insecurity of children. With households in both the December 2008 Current Population Survey (CPS) Food Security Supplement and the January 2009 CPS Unbanked and Underbanked Supplement, the project studies the relationship between bank account ownership, use of alternative financial service (AFS) providers, the organization of household finances, and the food security of children. Both children in unbanked households and those in households that use AFS products are more likely to experience very low food security and food insecurity than other households. Children in previously banked households face extremely high risk of food insecurity. Children in households that use AFS products that provide credit are more likely to experience very low food security than households using AFS product for basic financial transaction services. Large associations exist between the use of AFS products providing credit and child food insecurity but only pawn borrowing appears to have a causal effect. Couples that share at least some finances and jointly participate in financial decisions reduce the risk of child food insecurity. Evidence suggests that improved financial literacy and management skills could improve outcomes. Policies to eliminate childhood hunger should include a multifaceted approach that includes financial education, appropriate bank accounts, and access to low-cost credit.

Food insecurity is detrimental to children’s well-being. A better understanding of factors contributing to low and very low food security among children in the United States can guide the design of food assistance programs. We analyze the effects of household characteristics and local food environment attributes, including food prices and availability of food stores and eating places, on children’s food insecurity. We also investigate the effects of these characteristics and attributes on food preparation time. Using Becker’s household production approach, we propose an economic model that formalizes the use of constrained financial and time resources in the household. The model motivates empirical specifications of food insecurity and food preparation time equations, which are estimated jointly by maximum likelihood. We assemble a large dataset of households with children by pooling across years and matching the Food Security Supplement of the Current Population Survey, 2002–2010, and the American Time Use Survey, 2003–2011. These data are supplemented with location-specific variables from several large national sources. The estimates suggest intuitively plausible effects of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics on food insecurity and food preparation time. They also indicate that residing in a location with higher fast food prices and with fewer convenience stores and specialty food stores tends to exacerbate food insecurity. Public policies supporting parents’ financial, transportation, and childcare needs, enhancing parents’ resource management skills, supporting the food needs of school-age children, and encouraging businesses to open specialty food stores in poorer neighborhoods can help alleviate very low food security among children.