Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Food insecurity, “…the uncertainty of having, or unable to acquire, enough food due to insufficient money or other resources”, has become a leading indicator of well-being in the United States for two central reasons.  First, the extent of the problem is staggering – more than 42 million Americans were food insecure in 2015.  Second, there are multiple negative health outcomes due to food insecurity and, thus, higher health care costs. While most of the research and policy attention has been in the U.S. and Canada, there is increasing interest across Europe, especially in light of the continued economic struggles of many countries.

To reduce food insecurity, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program), the largest food assistance program in the U.S. with 46 million people receiving benefits totaling nearly $70 billion in 2015.  The basic structure hasn’t changed since 1979 and, in particular, there have not been changes to the benefit formula.  While extensive research finds that SNAP reduces food insecurity, millions of SNAP recipients remain food insecure and millions more food insecure households are above the SNAP eligibility threshold.  In a departure from previous work that has concentrated on the incidence of food insecurity, we focus on the additional income households report needing in order to be food secure – the resource gap – to identify potential changes to SNAP.  For this, we use data from the 2014 Current Population Survey (CPS).

Our paper has two central policy-relevant examinations.  Using the resource gap, we estimate the determinants for (a) food insecure SNAP participants and (b) SNAP-ineligible food insecure households close to the federally-established eligibility threshold of 130% of the poverty line.  Based on these determinants, we consider the costs and benefits with three scenarios:  perfect distribution of SNAP benefits based on individuals’ resource gaps, an across-the-board increase in SNAP benefits, and an increase in SNAP benefits based on household size.  For current recipients this would be increases from existing benefits and, for ineligible households, from zero benefits.

            The average weekly resource gap is $41.62 for food insecure SNAP households and $30.91 for food insecure households with incomes between 130% and 185% of the poverty line.    Under our first scenario, the cost is $20.1 billion for current SNAP participants and $7.1 billion for ineligible households.  This scenario would be difficult to implement due to the need to construct benefits based on directly reported resource gaps.  The second two scenarios are more easily implementable but are less effective at reducing food insecurity (since some recipients don’t get enough money to be food secure) and more expensive (since food secure recipients get more benefits and some food insecure recipients get more than is needed to make them food secure).  The reductions in food insecurity under those scenarios for current SNAP recipients range from 60.4% to 61.8% and the costs from $25.2 to $27.0 billion.  For currently ineligible households, the figures are 58.3% to 63.5% and $20.6 to $25.2 billion.