Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federally funded entitlement program, administered at the state level, that provides households with monthly benefits to purchase food. Between 1993 and 2004, all states and the District of Columbia implemented Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT), allowing SNAP participants to purchase food not with paper coupons, but through a debit-card like system. This change, intended to make the program more accessible, took place at the same time that many other SNAP reforms were being implemented. I attempt to isolate the relationship between EBT implementation and SNAP participation using state-level data gathered from the United States Department of Agriculture to estimate this relationship. My results suggest that there is generally no relationship between EBT implementation and SNAP participation at the state level.