The Effects the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children Demonstration has on Children’s Food Security

During the summers of 2011 through 2013 in selected demonstration locations, the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (SEBTC) Demonstration randomly assigned levels of additional food assistance to school-age children in low-income households in order to improve children’s food security in the summer, when many children lose access to federal school meals programs. The findings are simple and dramatic: a $60 per-child monthly SEBTC benefit reduces very low food security among children by one-third (a 3.0 percentage-point decline from a control group level of 9.1%) and food insecurity among children by one-fifth (an 8.3 percentage-point decline from a control group level of 43.0%). Additional benefits also improve food security for the adults in the household. There is some evidence of larger impacts among those households that were more disadvantaged at baseline. These results suggest that an SEBTC-like program would have substantial impacts on child, adult, and household food security. More broadly, they suggest that a moderate (e.g., $100 per household per month) increase in more general food assistance would also have substantial impacts on food security.