Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

High levels of participation as well as recent changes in SNAP policy have led to increased attention to the program. An area of concern is that SNAP participants have lower diet quality and higher rates of obesity than otherwise eligible non-participants. While it has been shown participating in the SNAP program and increasing SNAP benefits may result in participants purchasing more food, it is unclear whether participation in SNAP affects overall diet quality.

Whether or not SNAP causesparticipants to purchase less healthy foods is an open question. A series of cash-out experiments examined the nutritional quality of food purchased after some participants were randomly given an equivalent cash transfer instead of their food stamps. Bishop et al. (2000) and Devaney and Fraker (1986) found little difference in diet quality between the treatment and control group. Regardless of how the participants received their benefits, the nutritional quality of their overall food basket was fairly similar. On the other hand, observational studies comparing participants to similar non-participants found that participants consume fewer nutrients and have lower Healthy Eating Index scores than non-participants (Gregory et al. 2013, Leung et al. 2012).

Using the Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FOODAPS), we ask if nutritional quality of food purchased using SNAP benefits differ from the nutritional quality of food purchased using cash. Do SNAP households spend their in-kind benefits on different types of foods, at different retailers, and at different times of the month than with their own cash? The answer to this question has important implications for current policy proposals.

Because the FOODAPS data provide researchers the opportunity to observe how respondents payfor each food item they purchase, we are able to compare within household differences in the nutritional quality of food purchased with SNAP benefits and the nutritional quality of food purchased with cash. Linking food expenditure data with the food-at-home nutrient file of the FoodAPS, we construct a range of measures for dietary quality of food including the energy density (kcal/g), energy cost (kcal/$), percent empty calorie (% calorie from empty calories/ total calories), density of fruit, density of whole fruit, and density of whole grain. We further explore whether households’ attitudes toward healthy eating change along the SNAP benefit cycle as the benefit run out. This could potentially explain the difference between the dietary quality of food purchased with benefits versus cash.

By documenting the types of foods participants purchase with their benefits, the types of stores participants redeem their benefits at, how this varies over the benefit cycle, and the correlations between these elements, this project may shed light on a host of recent policy proposals including proposals to restrict the types of foods participants can purchase using their benefits.