The Role of Food Assistance in Helping Food Insecure Households Escape Hunger*

Abstract

E very year, the federal government spends a substantial sum on food assistance-totaling $41.8 billion in 2003 (Oliveira). As a result, there is a great deal of interest in assessing the role that food assistance programs play in helping low-income families maintain nutritional adequacy. One outcome of interest is household food security, a measure developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the 1990s which indicates whether all members of a household have access, at all times, to enough food for an active and healthy life. The relationship between food assistance and food security has been difficult to estimate because the program participation decision is endogenous. Food insecure households are more likely to self-select into food assistance programs, resulting in a positive association that must be controlled in order to assess the effect of program participation on food insecurity and hunger. Furthermore, the positive association resulting from self-selection has been found to dominate the (presumably) negative program effect (Gundersen and Oliveira).In this paper, we study one aspect of the relationship between food security and food assistance. For households that experienced some degree of hunger during the course of a year, we examine whether food assistance use was associated with lower odds of food insecurity during the last thirty days of that year. By focusing on changes in food security status, we partially circumvent the self-selection problem. We limit our analysis to the Food Stamp Program (FSP) and the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).

State-level predictors of food insecurity among households with children

“…For instance, food stamp recipients are consistently found to have higher levels of food insecurity than low income non-recipients, a result generally attributed to self-selection among eligible persons with the greatest need. Researchers have used a variety of strategies to control for selection, includ-ing household fixed-effect models (Wilde & Nord, 2005), two-stage approaches (Gundersen & Oliveira, 2001), and limiting the sample to households that have experienced hunger in the past (Kabbani & Kmeid, 2005). While such approaches are able to reduce and sometimes eliminate the positive association between food stamp receipt and food insecurity, most research has not documented positive benefits of food stamp participation on food security outcomes.…”

How Much Does the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Reduce Food Insecurity?

“… 4 Studies have also found that SNAP benefit amounts are associated with lower food insecurity among select populations, including SNAP participants (Rose, Gundersen, and Oliveira 1998) and households that experienced hunger in the past year (Kabbani and Kmeid 2005). …”

Household Food Insecurity: Serious Concerns for Child Development

“…Dunifon and Kowaleski-Jones (2003) found that food insecurity rates are higher among children receiving NSLP (24% vs. 5%), reflecting higher use of the program by those most in need. In contrast, Kabbani and Kmeid (2005) found that participants in the NSLP were less likely to be food insecure in comparison to eligible non-participants. The most recent work on this topic is by Gundersen, Kreider, and Pepper (in press) who addressed the dual issues of selection into NSLP (as with SNAP, children are generally thought to be negatively selected into NSLP) and misreporting of NSLP status (as with SNAP, misreporting is endemic on surveys).…”