Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Over half of households who were eligible for food stamps in 2002 were not enrolled in the program. Concerns that the administrative complexity of the program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), may be limiting its effectiveness have led to a push for policies to make it easier for eligible households to receive benefits. In this paper, I study the effect of a large change in the administration of SNAP benefits: the switch from paper food vouchers to the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) debit card. I leverage the staggered county-level rollout of the EBT system in California between 2002 and 2004 to estimate the effect of EBT adoption on program participation and infant health. I find that EBT led to a substantial increase in caseloads and applications for the program, likely in part due to an increase in the number of participating grocery stores. This rise in SNAP take-up is associated with an increase in average birth weight and a small reduction in the incidence of infant mortality for births to mothers most likely impacted by EBT. I conclude that the adoption of EBT for SNAP improved access to the program, leading to increases in take-up among eligible households and improvements in infant health at birth.