2018
DOI: 10.1257/aer.20170866
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How Are SNAP Benefits Spent? Evidence from a Retail Panel

Abstract: We use a novel retail panel with detailed transaction records to study the effect of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on household spending. We use administrative data to motivate three approaches to causal inference. The marginal propensity to consume SNAP-eligible food (MPCF) out of SNAP benefits is 0.5 to 0.6. The MPCF out of cash is much smaller. These patterns obtain even for households for whom SNAP benefits are economically equivalent to cash because their benefits are below their fo… Show more

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Cited by 165 publications
(34 citation statements)
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“…SNAP expansion during the pandemic was only available to those who are not already receiving their maximum benefits. Therefore, even though the propensity to spend benefits from food assistance programs on food is high [35], the benefits amount itself may simply not be enough to make a difference.…”
Section: Public Health Implicationsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…SNAP expansion during the pandemic was only available to those who are not already receiving their maximum benefits. Therefore, even though the propensity to spend benefits from food assistance programs on food is high [35], the benefits amount itself may simply not be enough to make a difference.…”
Section: Public Health Implicationsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In effect, the labelling of grants affects the marginal propensity to consume goods related to the grant label. For example, a disproportionate amount of money was spent on eligible foods from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments (the successor to the food stamp programme) in the US relative to cash (Beatty and Tuttle, 2015;Hastings and Shapiro, 2018); winter fuel payments were used to a disproportionate extent to pay for fuel in the UK (Beatty et al, 2014); and a disproportionately high proportion of child benefits were spent on child clothing in the Netherlands (Kooreman, 2000). In the latter two cases, spending behaviour changed even though no restrictions were placed on how the payment must be spent.…”
Section: Scheme Labellingmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Second, several studies rejected income fungibility, especially in the context of public transfers. Papers such as Beatty et al (2014), Hastings and Shapiro (2018), and Kooreman (2000) point out that the labelling of cash transfers or cash equivalents does not lead people to change spending in non-allowed locations or sectors. Kim et al ( 2020) also find little evidence that people changed their card spending in non-allowed sectors after the nationwide COVID-19 stimulus payments in Korea were disbursed.…”
Section: Methodology: Difference-in-difference-in-differences Estimationmentioning
confidence: 99%