IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/isu/genstf/201907010700001069.html

Investigating Treatment Effects of Participating Jointly in SNAP and WIC when the Treatment Is Validated Only for SNAP

Author

Listed:
  • Jensen, Helen H.
  • Kreider, Brent
  • Zhylyevskyy, Oleksandr

Abstract

USDA operates several food assistance programs aimed at alleviating food insecurity. Little is known about how they interact. We focus on SNAP and WIC, two of the largest means-tested programs that provide resources to low-income households to purchase food and differ in several respects. Our question is the extent to which participation in both programs alleviates food insecurity compared with participation in SNAP alone. We bound underlying causal effects by applying nonparametric treatment effect methods that allow for endogenous selection and underreported program participation to data from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS). FoodAPS contains administrative data to validate SNAP participation and data on the local food environment, including the cost of food, allowing us to tighten bounds on the causal effects. Under relatively weak assumptions about the selection process, combined with a food expenditure-based monotone instrumental variable, we identify that the marginal impact of participating in both programs is strictly positive. This finding provides evidence that the programs are nonredundant, which can aid policymakers in improving the design and targeting of food assistance programs. The methods showcase what can be learned about treatment effects when validation data are available for one program but not the other.

Suggested Citation

  • Jensen, Helen H. & Kreider, Brent & Zhylyevskyy, Oleksandr, 2019. "Investigating Treatment Effects of Participating Jointly in SNAP and WIC when the Treatment Is Validated Only for SNAP," ISU General Staff Papers 201907010700001069, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:isu:genstf:201907010700001069
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/03735869-8f68-41d4-9e01-488add72dbc1/content
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Musa, Anne O. & Carpio, Carlos E. & Williams, Ryan Blake, 2020. "Bounding the Effect of Joint Participation in SNAP and Private Food Charities on Food Security," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304614, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Bolbocean, Corneliu & Tylavsky, Frances A., 2021. "The impact of safety net programs on early-life developmental outcomes," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    4. Marianne P. Bitler & Christian Gregory, 2019. "Food Access, Program Participation, and Health: Research Using FoodAPS," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(1), pages 9-17, July.
    5. Jun Zhang & Yanghao Wang & Steven T. Yen, 2021. "Does Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Reduce Food Insecurity among Households with Children? Evidence from the Current Population Survey," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(6), pages 1-15, March.
    6. Seungyeon Cho, 2022. "The Effect of Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Food Insecurity of Children in U.S. Immigrant Households," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 501-510, September.
    7. Seung Jin Cho, 2022. "The effect of aging out of the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program on food insecurity," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(4), pages 664-685, April.
    8. Megan M. Reynolds & Patricia A. Homan, 2023. "Income Support Policy Packages and Birth Outcomes in U.S. States: An Ecological Analysis," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 42(4), pages 1-24, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:isu:genstf:201907010700001069. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Curtis Balmer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deiasus.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.