Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest of the federal food programs aimed at addressing food insecurity and reaches many food insecure households. By effectively addressing food insecurity, SNAP has the potential to also significantly impact the many adverse child and adult outcomes related to food insecurity, including malnutrition, developmental deficits, and mental health problems. However, there is compelling evidence that most SNAP recipients exhaust their SNAP benefits in the first week of the benefit month and buy and consume significantly less food by the end of the month. Such variation in expenditure and consumption over the course of the month also points to possible variability in food insecurity over the month, with food insecurity increasing toward the end of the month. As yet, no studies have assessed the daily variation in food insecurity over the SNAP month, nor have any studies observed daily variation in how families supplement their SNAP benefits. This paper will address these gaps in the literature using a new survey instrument to determine whether food insecurity and the use of social and community supports increase as a function of the SNAP cycle for a sample of North Carolina SNAP recipients.

Data and Methods

Using an adaptation of the Household Food Security Module, this study measured perceived food security in a convenience sample of SNAP participants in Durham, North Carolina. Study participants were approached at public housing communities and at the local social services administrative offices. The survey also collected information about the number of days passed since the participant’s most recent SNAP benefit receipt to identify whether food security is a function of the recency of receipt. Because, in North Carolina, the last digit of the head of household’s social security number determines the day of the month a household receives SNAP benefits, this recency measure is effectively random and exogenous. This serves to control for any unobserved individual differences between participants. Finally, the survey collected information about participants’ reliance on food banks and whether they borrowed money from family or friends to pay for food.

Results

The sample included 324 households with children. On average, households were moderately food insecure (Mean = 2.9 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being most food insecure). Fifty percent of households used all of their SNAP benefits in the first week and, on average, these households were more food insecure than those who did not exhaust their SNAP benefits as quickly. Approximately half of surveyed households (51%) reported borrowing money from friends or family and 40% used a food bank. Preliminary analyses showed that, though food insecurity does not increase over the course of the SNAP month, households are increasingly more likely to borrow money for food over the course of the month. Specifically, each additional day since SNAP benefit receipt increases the likelihood of borrowing by 5% (p < 0.01).