SNAP timing and food insecurity

Abstract

This paper makes several contributions to the literature regarding the measurement of food insecurity and implications for estimating factors that affect this outcome. First, we show that receipt of benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has a systematic effect on responses to questions in the 12-month food security module (FSM). We find that the probability of affirming more severe food hardships items, and the probability of being classified as having very low food security (VLFS), is higher just before and just after households receive their benefits. This leads to an under-estimate of VLFS by 3.2 percentage points for the SNAP sample (about 17 percent of prevalence). We also provide informative bounds on the relationship between SNAP and VLFS and show that the treatment effect of SNAP on VLFS is also likely underestimated.