Food Stamp Participation among Adult‐Only Households

Abstract

Several recent changes in the Food Stamp Program have been directed toward households without children, including new work requirements for able‐bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) and easier application and recertification procedures for the disabled and the elderly. Despite their relevance to policy makers, adult‐only households have not been extensively examined. We use administrative records from South Carolina to investigate how spells of food stamp participation for adult‐only households vary with ABAWD provisions, recertification intervals, and other characteristics. We find that households that were subject to ABAWD policies had shorter spells and lower rates of food stamp participation than other households. We also find that households were much more likely to leave the Food Stamp Program at recertification dates than at other dates. We further find that time limits were associated with exits with and without earnings, suggesting that this policy increased self‐sufficiency for some households but left others without support.

DO SNAP WORK REQUIREMENTS WORK?

“…8 Given that Ribar, Edelhoch, and Liu (2010) use administrative data on recipients, the analysis captures the policy's influence on SNAP participants but not the influence of individuals on the margin of participation in SNAP. 9 An unpublished working paper, Stacy, Scherpf, and Jo (2018), also analyzes the impact of work requirements using similar variation.…”

“…7 See Fang and Keane (2004) and Herbst (2017) for studies on the influence of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) work requirements. closely related study is Ribar, Edelhoch, and Liu (2010), which analyzes administrative Food Stamps data from South Carolina linked to unemployment insurance earnings from 1996 to 2005. They find that duration of Food Stamp enrollment significantly decreases due to work requirements and that individuals who faced worked requirements were more likely to exit SNAP and have earnings.…”

Mapping Food Insecurity in Metro Atlanta

“…Although the policy encourages some to work, it leaves many without either work or assistance. 238 ▪ Increase the availability of and participation in summer meal programs for children.…”

If at first you don’t succeed: applying for and staying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

“…Many caseload studies simply examine the incidence of programme participation, by modelling either the aggregate number of people or households receiving benefits (Wallace and Blank, 1999;Wilde et al, 2000;Kornfeld, 2002;Kabbani and Wilde, 2003;Ziliak et al, 2003;Mabli and Ferrerosa, 2010;Klerman and Danielson, 2011) or the incidence of receipt among individual households (Fraker and Moffitt, 1988;Keane and Moffitt, 1998;Currie and Grogger, 2001;Farrell et al, 2003;Haider et al, 2003;Huffman and Jensen, 2005;Hanratty, 2006;Ratcliffe et al, 2008). Other research considers programme entry separately from programme exit but examines these processes as simple bivariate outcomes (Blank and Ruggles, 1996;Gleason et al, 1998;Mills et al, 2001;Staveley et al, 2002;Cody et al, 2005;Ribar et al, , 2010Mabli et al, 2011).…”