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Local food prices and the purchasing power of SNAP benefits

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  • Christensen, Garret
  • Bronchetti, Erin Todd

Abstract

While the nominal value of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits is fixed across states (except for Hawaii and Alaska), variation in food prices across the U.S. is dramatic. We provide new evidence describing geographic variation in the purchasing power of SNAP benefits, measured by the extent to which SNAP-recipient households are able to afford the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) food plan on which legislated SNAP benefit levels are based. For more than one-quarter of SNAP households, SNAP benefits are too low to cover the cost of the TFP at the primary stores where they report shopping. SNAP purchasing power increases somewhat as we assume households can travel farther to shop and increases much more with the assumed ability to identify and travel to the lowest-cost store in a given area. It is unlikely, however, that SNAP households are sufficiently informed and mobile to shop at the lowest-cost store in a large (e.g., 10 to 20-mile) geographic area. We demonstrate that aggregate dollar shortfalls for SNAP households who cannot afford the TFP could be completely eliminated by redistributing from households in low-cost areas to those in high-cost areas, e.g., by indexing SNAP benefits to local food prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Christensen, Garret & Bronchetti, Erin Todd, 2020. "Local food prices and the purchasing power of SNAP benefits," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:95:y:2020:i:c:s030691922030141x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2020.101937
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    Cited by:

    1. Bai, Yan & Costlow, Leah & Ebel, Alissa & Laves, Sarah & Ueda, Yurika & Volin, Natalie & Zamek, Maya & Herforth, Anna & Masters, William A., 2021. "Review: Retail consumer price data reveal gaps and opportunities to monitor food systems for nutrition," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    2. Sabrina K. Young & Hayden Stewart, 2022. "U.S. Fruit and Vegetable Affordability on the Thrifty Food Plan Depends on Purchasing Power and Safety Net Supports," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(5), pages 1-12, February.
    3. Okrent, Abigail & Sweitzer, Megan D. & Zhen, Chen & Byrne, Anne T. & Muth, Mary K., 2023. "Getting the Price Right: Analyzing and Comparing Food Prices Over Time and Space," 2023 Annual Meeting, July 23-25, Washington D.C. 335637, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore, 2023. "Understanding SNAP: An overview of recent research," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    5. Davis, George C., 2021. "The Implicit Hidden Reductions in the SNAP Benefit Formula: A Unifying Framework for Analysis and Policy Debates," 2021 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Austin, Texas 313993, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Gundersen, Craig, 2021. "Viewpoint: A proposal to reconstruct the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) into a universal basic income program for food," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).

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