IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ajagec/v98y2016i4p997-1017..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Can We Learn about the Effects of Food Stamps on Obesity in the Presence of Misreporting?

Author

Listed:
  • Lorenzo Almada
  • Ian McCarthy
  • Rusty Tchernis

Abstract

There is an increasing perception among policy makers that food stamp benefits contribute positively to adult obesity rates. We show that these results are heavily dependent on one’s assumptions regarding the accuracy of reported food stamp participation. When allowing for misreporting, we find no evidence that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participation significantly increases the probability of being obese or overweight among adults. Our results also highlight the inherent bias and inconsistency of common point estimates when ignoring misreporting, with treatment effects from instrumental variable methods exceeding the nonparametric upper bounds by over 200% in some cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Lorenzo Almada & Ian McCarthy & Rusty Tchernis, 2016. "What Can We Learn about the Effects of Food Stamps on Obesity in the Presence of Misreporting?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(4), pages 997-1017.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:98:y:2016:i:4:p:997-1017.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ajae/aaw017
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brent Kreider, 2010. "Regression Coefficient Identification Decay in The Presence of Infrequent Classification Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(4), pages 1017-1023, November.
    2. Hilary W. Hoynes & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, 2009. "Consumption Responses to In-Kind Transfers: Evidence from the Introduction of the Food Stamp Program," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 109-139, October.
    3. Aigner, Dennis J., 1973. "Regression with a binary independent variable subject to errors of observation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 49-59, March.
    4. James J. Heckman & Edward Vytlacil, 2005. "Structural Equations, Treatment Effects, and Econometric Policy Evaluation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(3), pages 669-738, May.
    5. Unknown, 2004. "Effects Of Food Assistance And Nutrition Programs On Nutrition And Health: Volume 3, Literature Review," Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Reports 33863, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    6. Courtemanche, Charles & Pinkston, Joshua C. & Stewart, Jay, 2015. "Adjusting body mass for measurement error with invalid validation data," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 275-293.
    7. Ian McCarthy & Daniel L. Millimet & Manan Roy, 2015. "Bounding treatment effects: A command for the partial identification of the average treatment effect with endogenous and misreported treatment assignment," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 15(2), pages 411-436, June.
    8. Arthur Lewbel, 2007. "Estimation of Average Treatment Effects with Misclassification," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(2), pages 537-551, March.
    9. Daniel L. Millimet & Rusty Tchernis & Muna Husain, 2010. "School Nutrition Programs and the Incidence of Childhood Obesity," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 45(3).
    10. Yingyao Hu & Susanne M. Schennach, 2008. "Instrumental Variable Treatment of Nonclassical Measurement Error Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(1), pages 195-216, January.
    11. Craig Gundersen & Brent Kreider, 2008. "Food Stamps and Food Insecurity: What Can Be Learned in the Presence of Nonclassical Measurement Error?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(2), pages 352-382.
    12. Kreider, Brent & Pepper, John V., 2007. "Disability and Employment: Reevaluating the Evidence in Light of Reporting Errors," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 102, pages 432-441, June.
    13. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    14. James J. Heckman & Sergio Urzua & Edward Vytlacil, 2006. "Understanding Instrumental Variables in Models with Essential Heterogeneity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(3), pages 389-432, August.
    15. Fox, Mary Kay & Hamilton, William L. & Lin, Biing-Hwan, 2004. "Effects Of Food Assistance And Nutrition Programs On Nutrition And Health: Volume 4, Executive Summary Of The Literature Review," Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Reports 33871, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    16. Kaushal, N., 2007. "Do food stamps cause obesity?: Evidence from immigrant experience," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 968-991, September.
    17. Bruce Meyer & Robert Goerge, 2011. "Errors in Survey Reporting and Imputation and Their Effects on Estimates of Food Stamp Program Participation," Working Papers 11-14, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    18. Brent Kreider & John V. Pepper & Craig Gundersen & Dean Jolliffe, 2012. "Identifying the Effects of SNAP (Food Stamps) on Child Health Outcomes When Participation Is Endogenous and Misreported," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(499), pages 958-975, September.
    19. Keisuke Hirano & Jack R. Porter, 2012. "Impossibility Results for Nondifferentiable Functionals," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(4), pages 1769-1790, July.
    20. Bruce D. Meyer & Wallace K. C. Mok & James X. Sullivan, 2009. "The Under-Reporting of Transfers in Household Surveys: Its Nature and Consequences," NBER Working Papers 15181, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Hausman, J. A. & Abrevaya, Jason & Scott-Morton, F. M., 1998. "Misclassification of the dependent variable in a discrete-response setting," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 239-269, September.
    22. Elizabeth Dowler, 2003. "Food and Poverty: Insights from the 'North'," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 21(5-6), pages 569-580, December.
    23. Maximilian D. Schmeiser, 2012. "The impact of long‐term participation in the supplemental nutrition assistance program on child obesity," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(4), pages 386-404, April.
    24. Maoyong Fan, 2010. "Do Food Stamps Contribute to Obesity in Low-Income Women? Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1165-1180.
    25. Odelia Rosin, 2008. "The Economic Causes Of Obesity: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(4), pages 617-647, September.
    26. Parke E. Wilde & Christine K. Ranney, 2000. "The Monthly Food Stamp Cycle: Shooping Frequency and Food Intake Decisions in an Endogenous Switching Regression Framework," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 82(1), pages 200-213.
    27. Meyerhoefer, Chad D. & Pylypchuk, Vuriy, 2008. "AJAE Appendix: Does Participation in the Food Stamp Program Increase the Prevalence of Obesity and Health Care Spending?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics APPENDICES, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 90(2), pages 1-6.
    28. Justine Hastings & Ebonya Washington, 2010. "The First of the Month Effect: Consumer Behavior and Store Responses," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 142-162, May.
    29. Bruce Meyer & Nikolas Mittag, 2013. "Misclassification In Binary Choice Models," Working Papers 13-27, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    30. Elton Mykerezi & Bradford Mills, 2010. "The Impact of Food Stamp Program Participation on Household Food Insecurity," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1379-1391.
    31. Black, Dan & Sanders, Seth & Taylor, Lowell, 2003. "Measurement of Higher Education in the Census and Current Population Survey," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 98, pages 545-554, January.
    32. Thomas M. Fraker & Alberto P. Martini & James C. Ohls, 1995. "The Effect of Food Stamp Cashout on Food Expenditures: An Assessment of the Findings from Four Demonstrations," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30(4), pages 633-649.
    33. Gundersen, Craig & Kreider, Brent & Pepper, John, 2012. "The impact of the National School Lunch Program on child health: A nonparametric bounds analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 166(1), pages 79-91.
    34. Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, 2009. "Do School Lunches Contribute to Childhood Obesity?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(3).
    35. Cawley, John & Meyerhoefer, Chad, 2012. "The medical care costs of obesity: An instrumental variables approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 219-230.
    36. Frazis, Harley & Loewenstein, Mark A., 2003. "Estimating linear regressions with mismeasured, possibly endogenous, binary explanatory variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 151-178, November.
    37. Meyer, Bruce D. & Goerge, Robert M., 2011. "Errors in Survey Reporting and Imputation and Their Effects on Estimates of Food Stamp Program Participation," Contractor and Cooperator Reports 312394, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    38. Charles L. Baum, 2011. "The Effects of Food Stamps on Obesity," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 77(3), pages 623-651, January.
    39. Burgstahler, Rebecca & Gundersen, Craig & Garasky, Steven B., 2012. "The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Financial Stress, and Childhood Obesity," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 41(1), pages 1-14, April.
    40. John Cawley, 2004. "The Impact of Obesity on Wages," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(2).
    41. Charles F. Manski & John V. Pepper, 2000. "Monotone Instrumental Variables, with an Application to the Returns to Schooling," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(4), pages 997-1012, July.
    42. Xiaohong Chen & Han Hong & Denis Nekipelov, 2011. "Nonlinear Models of Measurement Errors," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(4), pages 901-937, December.
    43. Charles F. Manski & John V. Pepper, 2009. "More on monotone instrumental variables," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 12(s1), pages 200-216, January.
    44. Bhattacharya, Jay & Bundorf, M. Kate, 2009. "The incidence of the healthcare costs of obesity," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 649-658, May.
    45. Erich Battistin & Barbara Sianesi, 2011. "Misclassified Treatment Status and Treatment Effects: An Application to Returns to Education in the United Kingdom," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(2), pages 495-509, May.
    46. Barbara Devaney & Robert Moffitt, 1991. "Dietary Effects of the Food Stamp Program," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 73(1), pages 202-211.
    47. AIGNER, Dennis J., 1973. "Regression with a binary independent variable subject to errors of observation," LIDAM Reprints CORE 130, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    48. Zhuo Chen & Steven T. Yen & David B. Eastwood, 2005. "Effects of Food Stamp Participation on Body Weight and Obesity," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(5), pages 1167-1173.
    49. Brachet, Tanguy, 2008. "Maternal Smoking, Misclassification, and Infant Health," MPRA Paper 21466, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    50. Vassilopoulos, Achilleas & Drichoutis, Andreas & Nayga, Rodolfo & Lazaridis, Panagiotis, 2011. "Does the Food Stamp Program Really Increase Obesity? The Importance of Accounting for Misclassification Errors," MPRA Paper 28768, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    51. Aprajit Mahajan, 2006. "Identification and Estimation of Regression Models with Misclassification," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(3), pages 631-665, May.
    52. Nancy Cole & Mary Kay Fox, "undated". "Diet Quality of Americans by Food Stamp Participation Status: Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999-2004," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 364f57606a8646dfa102c6215, Mathematica Policy Research.
    53. Ver Ploeg, Michele & Ralston, Katherine L., 2008. "Food Stamps and Obesity: What Do We Know?," Economic Information Bulletin 58640, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nguimkeu, Pierre & Denteh, Augustine & Tchernis, Rusty, 2019. "On the estimation of treatment effects with endogenous misreporting," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 208(2), pages 487-506.
    2. Chad D. Meyerhoefer & Muzhe Yang, 2011. "The Relationship between Food Assistance and Health: A Review of the Literature and Empirical Strategies for Identifying Program Effects," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 33(3), pages 304-344.
    3. Almada, Lorenzo N. & Tchernis, Rusty, 2018. "Measuring effects of SNAP on obesity at the intensive margin," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 150-163.
    4. Tommasi, Denni & Zhang, Lina, 2024. "Bounding program benefits when participation is misreported," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 238(1).
    5. Acerenza, Santiago & Ban, Kyunghoon & Kedagni, Desire, 2021. "Marginal Treatment Effects with Misclassified Treatment," ISU General Staff Papers 202106180700001132, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    6. Battistin, Erich & De Nadai, Michele & Sianesi, Barbara, 2014. "Misreported schooling, multiple measures and returns to educational qualifications," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 181(2), pages 136-150.
    7. Takahide Yanagi, 2019. "Inference on local average treatment effects for misclassified treatment," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(8), pages 938-960, September.
    8. Brent Kreider & John V. Pepper & Manan Roy, 2020. "Does The Women, Infants, And Children Program Improve Infant Health Outcomes?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(4), pages 1731-1756, October.
    9. Daniel Millimet & Manan Roy, 2015. "Partial identification of the long-run causal effect of food security on child health," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 83-141, February.
    10. MacEwan, Joanna P. & Smith, Aaron & Alston, Julian M., 2016. "The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, energy balance, and weight gain," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 103-120.
    11. Manan Roy & Daniel Millimet & Rusty Tchernis, 2012. "Federal nutrition programs and childhood obesity: inside the black box," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 1-38, March.
    12. Cawley, John, 2015. "An economy of scales: A selective review of obesity's economic causes, consequences, and solutions," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 244-268.
    13. Susan Chen & Le Wang, 2021. "SNAP participation, diet quality, and obesity: robust evidence with estimation techniques without external instrumental variables," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 1641-1667, September.
    14. Nathalie Mathieu‐Bolh, 2022. "The elusive link between income and obesity," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 935-968, September.
    15. Lee, Ji Yong & Nayga Jr, Rodolfo M. & Jo, Young & Restrepo, Brandon J., 2022. "Time use and eating patterns of SNAP participants over the benefit month," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    16. Kasahara, Hiroyuki & Shimotsu, Katsumi, 2022. "Identification Of Regression Models With A Misclassified And Endogenous Binary Regressor," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(6), pages 1117-1139, December.
    17. Denni Tommasi & Arthur Lewbel & Rossella Calvi, 2017. "LATE with Mismeasured or Misspecified Treatment: An application to Women's Empowerment in India," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2017-27, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    18. Francis DiTraglia & Camilo Garcia-Jimeno, 2015. "On Mis-measured Binary Regressors: New Results And Some Comments on the Literature, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 15-039, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 11 Nov 2015.
    19. Akanksha Negi & Digvijay Singh Negi, 2022. "Difference-in-Differences with a Misclassified Treatment," Papers 2208.02412, arXiv.org.
    20. Francis DiTraglia & Camilo Garcia-Jimeno, 2015. "On Mis-measured Binary Regressors: New Results And Some Comments on the Literature, Third Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 15-040, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 24 Nov 2015.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C01 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - Econometrics
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. What Can We Learn about the Effects of Food Stamps on Obesity in the Presence of Misreporting? (AJAE 2016) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:98:y:2016:i:4:p:997-1017.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.