Does Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Reduce Food Insecurity among Households with Children? Evidence from the Current Population Survey

Abstract

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is designed to improve household diet and food security—a pressing problem confronting low-income families in the United States. Previous studies on the issue often ignored the methodological issue of endogenous program participation. We revisit this important issue by estimating a simultaneous equation system with ordinal household food insecurity. Data are drawn from the 2009–2011 Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS), restricted to SNAP-eligible households with children. Our results add to the stocks of empirical findings that SNAP participation ameliorates food insecurity among adults only, but increases the probabilities of low and very low food security among children. These contradictory results indicate that our selection approach with a single cross section is only partially successful, and that additional efforts are needed in further analyses of this complicated issue, perhaps with longitudinal data. Socio-demographic variables are found to affect food-secure households and food-insecure households differently, but affect SNAP nonparticipants and participants in the same direction. The state policy tools, such as broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE) and simplified reporting, can encourage SNAP participation and thus ameliorate food insecurity. Our findings can inform policy deliberations.

Relationship between Food Security, Nutrition Security, and Diabetes: The Role of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation

“…To address these food insecurity issues, nutrition assistance programs such as SNAP were developed [ 31 ]; however, overall cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors such as diabetes remain unchanged. Previous studies showed the prevalence of obesity and diabetes did not decline among SNAP participants [ 36 ].…”

“…In addition, we examined whether the association was moderated by SNAP by including an interaction term between the exposure and SNAP and adjusting for the selected confounders. Subsequent subgroup analysis was conducted by SNAP [ 31 ].…”

Food Insufficiency among Job-Loss Households during the Pandemic: The Role of Food Assistance Programs

“…The U.S. government has implemented a series of food assistance programs for improving low-income Americans' food security and reducing hunger [15]. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was designed to alleviate food insecurity and poverty [15,16]. Other federal programs target more specific populations, for example the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children for pregnant, breastfeeding and postpartum women, and infants and children up to five years old.…”

“…In 2015, food banks already served an estimated 46 million Americans [17]. There has been extensive research examining the effectiveness of food assistance programs on reducing food insecurity, but the findings have been inconsistent [16]. For instance, some studies have found no association between SNAP participation and food security [18,19], whereas others have suggested that SNAP participants have higher [19,20] or lower odds of being food insecure for adults [12,[21][22][23][24].…”

The Nutritional Content of Rescued Food Conveyed by a Food Aid Organization

“…As a consequence, the nutritional quality of emergency food has been examined by researchers in different charitable organizations in several high-income countries such as Canada [22][23][24][25][26], France [27], Germany [28], Italy [29], the Netherlands [30], the U.K. [31][32][33], the USA [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42], and Australia [18]. In addition to the homeless, members of food-insecure households resort to food banks in emergencies [23,43,44] or use them as long-term food sources [45]. The longer low-income households depend on food assistance programs the more nutritional adequacy evaluations are crucial to determine if the programs meet the clients' (long-term) needs [43].…”