Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

While the majority of U.S. households have consistent, dependable access to enough food for an active healthy life, a minority of households experience food insecurity. These households have limited access to food because of a lack of money or other resources. Between 2009 and 2014, roughly 14.5 percent of all U.S. households were food insecure (Coleman-Jensen et al., 2015). Households employ a variety of methods to meet their food needs.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program) is the largest food assistance program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The goal of SNAP is to help low-income households obtain access to food, a healthful diet, and nutrition education. By improving nutrition and diet, the program is also intended to advance other goals, such as improving food security.

In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) increased SNAP benefits to address the economic consequences of the Great Recession. ARRA specified that after the 2009 increase, benefits would remain constant in dollar terms until food price inflation would bring benefits, as calculated by pre-ARRA rules, up to the new level. The higher benefit levels were expected to remain through 2014, however, Congressional legislation resulted in the early expiration of ARRA. On November 1, 2013, ARRA expired resulting in a benefit cut for every SNAP household as benefits returned to pre-ARRA levels. For families of four receiving the maximum monthly benefit, the cut was $36 per month (Dean and Rosenbaum, 2013).

Prior research suggests the implementation of ARRA improved food security and increased food expenditures for low-income households in the United States (Nord and Prell, 2011). Specifically, Nord and Prell (2011) found that the 13.6 percent increase in SNAP benefits provided by ARRA was associated with a 34 percent decrease in very low food security and a 4.4 percent increase in food expenditures by SNAP recipients. However, between 2009 and 2011 food-price inflation reduced the real value of the ARRA-SNAP benefit by nearly half, which resulted in a 16.5 percent increase in very low food security (Nord, 2013).

The analyses will examine the effect of the sunset of ARRA on the food security of U.S. households using 2009-2015 data from the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS). The analyses will exploit exogenous variation associated with SNAP to estimate difference-in-difference behavioral Rasch models of food security. The Rasch model has several advantages over other methods of modelling food security (Rabbitt, 2013; Moffitt and Ribar, 2015). One such benefit is the ability to examine the effect of SNAP on the entire continuum of food security, allowing the researcher to translate the results into marginal effects for all food security status categories. Unlike other ARRA studies, we disaggregate our sample into policy relevant subsamples to examine heterogeneity in the effect of ARRA on food security.