Errors in Survey Reporting and Imputation and their Effects on Estimates of Food Stamp Program Participation

Abstract

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Estimating the Associations between SNAP and Food Insecurity, Obesity, and Food Purchases with Imperfect Administrative Measures of Participation

“…The false negative rates are 11.65% using ADMIN and 11.46% using ALERT, while the false positive rates are 8.39% using ADMIN and 7.83% using ALERT. Interestingly, for both participation measures, the prevalence of false negatives is substantially lower than previously reported by studies using more traditional survey data sets (Mittag, ; Meyer, Mittag, and George ). One possible explanation is that FoodAPS households were asked to consent to having their responses verified.…”

The Changing Safety Net for Low-Income Parents and Their Children: Structural or Cyclical Changes in Income Support Policy?

“…With our focus on the family we make the implicit assumption of resource sharing within the household such that all members benefit from SNAP even if they are not directly a recipient. Ziliak (2015b) shows that from 1980 to 2000, population-weighted participation rates were broadly comparable to administrative data, but over the past decade there has been a divergence in the levels, though not in trends (the levels gap was previously highlighted in Wheaton (2007) and Meyer et al (2014)). Information on the EITC and the refundable portion of the CTC are not collected in the ASEC, and thus we rely on simulated eligibility based on the NBER’s TAXSIM model.…”

Misreporting of Government Transfers: How Important Are Survey Design and Geography?

“…Thus, we cannot determine the extent of or adjust for missed links, because we cannot distinguish survey records that did not link to the administrative data because they do not receive SNAP, from survey records that did not link due to missing or incorrect personal information. See Meyer and Mittag () for further discussion and Meyer et al () for arguments why such missed links likely understate net differences between the data sources. Twenty‐one households in our sample did not provide consent to record linkage.…”

“…These studies reveal high rates of underreporting, showing that sometimes more than half of true Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients do not report receipt in the survey data. The errors are systematically related to other variables in the surveys, so that they severely bias studies of poverty and program receipt as well as analyses of the safety net and its effectiveness (see e.g., Bollinger and David ; Cerf Harris ; Meyer et al ; Meyer and Mittag ).…”