Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

There is substantial evidence that health and socioeconomic inequalities persist across generations. A growing number of studies suggest that differences in early life health environments may causally contribute to these disparities. In utero health shocks, in particular, have been shown to affect individuals’ later life health and earnings. Similarly, there is evidence that policies intended to improve the early childhood environment generate better adult outcomes and a growing body of research documents that early life access to key safety net programs leads to improvements in individuals’ later life health and self sufficiency. Specifically, cohorts with greater access to the Food Stamp Program (now the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) in the first few years of life have a lower incidence of health conditions associated with metabolic syndrome and better economic outcomes.

By extension, the causal impacts of early life interventions should echo beyond the exposed generation. For example, myriad studies find that the effects of diet restriction on the metabolic syndrome of rats and humans transfer to the next generation. Another potential channel is through the interventions’ documented impacts on adult earnings, as increases in family income have been associated with improvements in child well-being. To date, however, little is known about the extent of multi-generational linkages or the potential for public policy to alter them.

In this project we document the multi-generational impacts of the Food Stamp Program, by examining whether exposure to Food Stamps in utero and during childhood has spill-over effects onto later generations’ health. We estimate the multi-generational effects of the Food Stamp program by using cross-county variation in the timing of the program’s initial roll-out, which occurred between 1961 and 1975. Hoynes, Schanzenbach and Almond (2016) successfully harnessed this program variation to identify the causal effects of the first-generation’s exposure to Food Stamps on their later life health and economic outcomes using the PSID. We build on their difference-in-difference approach to investigate whether the variation in treatment by mothers’ county and year of birth generates improvements in the second generation’s health.

We use the PSID, which is ideally suited for our purposes as it contains information on mother’s county and year of birth, as well a rich set of measures of child well-being from birth to early adulthood. The PSID also allows us to examine the potential mechanisms through which these multi-generational effects occur, because we can isolate whether the effects are being transmitted through biological linkages of health outcomes across generations, or through the increased income of parents.

Knowing the extent to which the benefits of the U.S. safety net transmit beyond the exposed cohorts (“the first generation”) to their children (“the second generation”) is important, as substantive multiplier effects would suggest that existing cost-benefit calculations underestimate the true value of these programs. One in five U.S. children receive Food Stamps, so the program’s multi-generational spillover effects may be far reaching. Moreover, our work will provide important evidence about how government policies can ameliorate the intergenerational consequences of inequality.