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

Recent studies linking household surveys to administrative records reveal high rates of misreporting of program receipt. We use the FoodAPS survey to examine whether the findings of these studies of general household surveys using one or two states generalize to a survey with a narrow focus and across many states. First, we study how reporting errors differ from other surveys. We find a lower rate of false negatives (failures to report true receipt) in FoodAPS, likely partly due to the shorter recall period of FoodAPS. Misreporting varies with household characteristics and between interviewers. Second, we examine geographic heterogeneity in survey error to assess whether we can extrapolate from linked data from a few states. We find systematic differences between states in unconditional error rates but no evidence of substantial differences conditional on common covariates. Thus, extrapolating error rates across states may yield more accurate receipt estimates than uncorrected survey estimates.

Section: Data and Linkagementioning

confidence: 99%

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

Meyer

Mittag

2019

“…Recent articles using FoodAPS disagree somewhat as to the magnitude of the false positive rate in the case of self‐reported SNAP participation. According to Courtemanche, Denteh, and Tchernis (, Tables and ), the false positive rate ranges from 4.53 to 12.17%, depending on the sample and the approach to combining the two administrative data sources. In contrast, estimates presented by Kang and Moffitt () imply a false positive rate of less than 1%, and Meyer and Mittag (, Table ) report a rate of 1.2%.…”

Section: Methodology and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Courtemanche, Denteh, and Tchernis (), among other researchers, point out limitations of SNAP administrative records employed in FoodAPS, including missing data and varying degree of data quality across states. Also, the two administrative data sources sometimes disagree, perhaps in part due to underlying timing discrepancies.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Treatment Effects of Participating Jointly in SNAP and WIC when the Treatment Is Validated Only for SNAP

Jensen¹,

Kreider²,

Zhylyevskyy³

2019

The U.S. Department of Agriculture operates several food assistance programs aimed at alleviating food insecurity. We study whether participation in both participation in both SNAP and WIC alleviates food insecurity compared with participation in SNAP alone. We bound underlying causal effects by applying nonparametric treatment effect methods that allow for endogenous selection and underreported program participation when validation data are available for one program (treatment) but not the other. We estimate average treatment effects using data from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS). FoodAPS includes administrative data to validate SNAP participation. Information on local food prices allows us to construct a food expenditure‐based monotone instrumental variable that does not require a typical instrumental variable exclusion restriction. Under relatively weak monotonicity assumptions, we identify that the impact of participating in both programs relative to SNAP alone is strictly positive, suggesting that the programs are nonredundant. This evidence can support improved design and targeting of food programs.

“…Courtemanche, Denteh, and Tchernis () carefully examine the two different administrative measures of SNAP use and contrast them with the survey's self‐reports of SNAP use. The first administrative measure comes from ADMIN data and the second from ALERT data.…”

Section: Articles In the Symposiummentioning

confidence: 99%

Food Access, Program Participation, and Health: Research Using FoodAPS

Bitler

Gregory

2019

This piece is an introduction to the symposium on Food Access, Program Participation, and Health: Research using FoodAPS. The symposium includes articles presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference on Food Security on December 7 and 8, 2017. The research herein was supported by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, grant number 59‐5000‐5‐0115. The grant included funding to study the effects of various food assistance programs on outcomes, using data from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS). We describe the programs and the FoodAPS data, and point out highlights from the articles.