Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This study uses the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) data to examine how food insecurity, diet quality, and other measures of household wellbeing differ according to government food assistance levels. We answer this question by utilizing quasi-experimental variation in per-capita SNAP benefits to estimate causal effects of additional benefits on household-level outcomes among SNAP and free and reduced price (FRP) meals participating households. To account for benefit endogeneity, we identify comparison households using plausibly exogenous variation in nutrition assistance by exploiting the timing of school breaks. The results from our study demonstrate that, conditional on a rich set of household and individual-level covariates and county fixed-effects, school breaks lead to significant reductions in the amount of meals or food events acquired for free among both FRP participating households and SNAP households with school-enrolled children. We find that the probability of reporting low food security increases among SNAP households with each additional child without access to school meals due to school break while school breaks marginally improve the food security status of all FRP meal participating households. We do not find evidence that the loss of FRP meals during school breaks adversely affects the financial conditions or the diet quality of low-income households with school enrolled children.