Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest of nutrition assistance program in the U.S. By 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 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. As yet, however, no studies have assessed the daily variation in food insecurity over the SNAP month. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by using daily survey data from SNAP recipients to determine whether food insecurity varies as a function of the SNAP cycle.

 

Data and Methods

This study sought to recruit all SNAP-recipient parents in a birth cohort (children born between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010) in Durham, North Carolina. Thus far, 75 participants have enrolled in the study (N = 2,100 person-days). Recruitment is on-going and will be completed by July 2016. Participants were asked to provide daily survey responses each day for four weeks (28 days). All daily survey questions were asked and answered via SMS text message. The daily food insecurity scale is a three-item scale:

- At any point today, did you feel worried whether your food would run out before you get money to buy more?

- How much did you feel today that you couldn't afford to eat balanced meals?

- Did you eat less today than you felt you should because there wasn't enough money to buy food?

Responses to all three items were summed to create a daily food insecurity score. 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.

Results

Preliminary analyses show that the recency of SNAP receipt is related to daily food insecurity. The average within-family relationship has a “j” shape, with food insecurity declining at the beginning of the SNAP month and then increasing toward the end of the month. The decline at the beginning of the month is about .08 SD from the day of transfer to the lowest point. The increase at the end of the month is more substantial: .47 SD on the last day of the SNAP month, compared to the lowest point mid-month. This within-month variability may partially explain gaps between low-income and high-income children, as repeated exposure to ups and downs is stressful for families.