Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation and Child Food Security

Abstract

WHAT'S KNOWN ON THIS SUBJECT: Recent studies have shown that participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is associated with improved household food security. With the exception of 1 descriptive analysis, studies have not examined how SNAP affects children' s food security. WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS:This article estimates the association between SNAP and children' s food security using the largest, most rigorous national study of food security to date. Given current proposals to reduce program size, this study underscores SNAP' s importance in affecting children' s well-being. abstract OBJECTIVE: This article investigates the association between Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation and child food security by using data from the largest national survey of the food security of SNAP participants to date. METHODS:The analysis used a survey of nearly 3000 households with children and a quasi-experimental research design that consisted of 2 sets of comparisons. Using a cross-sectional sample, we compared information collected from SNAP households within days of program entry with information collected from a contemporaneous sample of SNAP households that had participated for ∼6 months. Next, by using a longitudinal sample, we compared baseline information collected from new-entrant SNAP households with information from those same households 6 months later. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to estimate associations between SNAP and child food security.RESULTS: SNAP participation was associated with an approximately one-third decrease in the odds of children being food insecure in both samples. In the cross-sectional analysis only, SNAP was also associated with a decrease in the odds of children experiencing severe food insecurity (designated very low food security). Findings were qualitatively robust to different empirical specifications. CONCLUSIONS:After controlling for other possible confounders, we found children in households that had participated in SNAP for 6 months experienced improvements in food security. On the basis of these findings, we conclude SNAP serves a vital role in improving the health and well-being of low-income children by increasing food security. Future research is needed to determine whether specific groups of children experience differential improvements in food security. Pediatrics 2014;133:610-619

Promoting Food Security for All Children

“…Federal benefits can attenuate the severity of food insecurity but might not eliminate it, particularly for children and in regions with higher food costs. 15,16 …”

The Role of Automatic Stabilizers in the U.S. Business Cycle

“…To identify the probability of immediate reemployment, we assume it is the same as the job finding probability of other unemployed workers. In addition, we calibrate the probability of transitioning from long-term unemployment to employment based on the finding of Mabli, Tordella, Castner, Godfrey, and Foran (2011) that 3% of SNAP participants leave the program each month. Our procedure is as follows: we use the moments above to create a target transition matrix across employment states that our model should generate.…”

Accessibility of summer meals and the food insecurity of low-income households with children

“…This finding may initially seem counterintuitive, but is in fact a natural consequence of the fact that the programme and others like it are reaching families with the greatest need. However, as noted above, carefully constructed empirical designs that take advantage of natural experiments to address selection have found that participation in SNAP and other programmes is associated with decreased food insecurity (2)(3)(4)(5)(6) . In this sense, the use of geographic accessibility as a proxy for participation is a boon, since it is far less likely that families with high levels of need (food insecurity) choose where to live because of proximity to a summer meals site.…”

“…In 2013, the fifteen domestic food and nutrition assistance programmes administered by the USDA reached about 25 % of Americans at a cost of nearly $US 109 billion (1) . Studies of the largest of these programmes (including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)) have most frequently found that they are successful in reducing both household and child food insecurity (2)(3)(4)(5)(6) . However, much less is known about how other nutrition programmes impact household food security.…”