Essays on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Abstract

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the U.S.’ largest nutrition assistance program, providing food vouchers to approximately 1 out of 8 Americans every month. This dissertation, comprised of three chapters, uses economics to examine how policies and social norms affect the costs of participating in SNAP and related programs for eligible, low-income households. My work evaluates how innovative policy changes can address the social and administrative challenges of participating in safety net programs. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the national budget of SNAP doubled, its caseload increased by 10 percent, and its application denial rate increased by nearly 50 percent. In Chapter 1, I investigate the factors behind these persistent enrollment changes, including economic conditions and policy changes. I compile a new dataset on state policy waivers during the COVID-19 public health emergency, including unprecedented flexibilities in enrollment procedures and increases in benefit amounts, and I use state-level policy variation to understand the effects of each policy on SNAP caseloads. I find that emergency supplemental benefits and recertification waivers drove enrollment increases. I estimate an elasticity of SNAP enrollment with respect to benefit size of 0.09-0.18. These results suggest that government policies can be more influential than economic conditions in determining transfer program caseload patterns. Negative social judgments or “stigma” about the receipt of government benefits may discourage participation and impose costs on those already receiving benefits. But who experiences stigma in SNAP, how it affects participant decisions, and whether it can be reduced remain unclear. In Chapter 2, co-authored with Alice Heath and Michael Holcomb, we use a nationally representative survey experiment to measure levels of stigma across social groups, and we test whether low-touch interventions intended to alleviate stigma may affect SNAP participation. We find that stigma varies by political affiliation and SNAP participation status: Democrats report lower levels of stigmatizing beliefs than Republicans, and SNAP participants report lower levels of stigma than non-participants. Our three randomized interventions have heterogenous effects: they decrease stigma among Democrats and those with low expectations of judgment from others, increase stigma among Republicans, and have no effect on those with high expectations of judgment. One intervention that addresses a common zero-sum concern—that enrolling in SNAP prevents others from receiving benefits—increases interest in take-up among eligible non-participants while decreasing support for SNAP spending among the general population. Our findings indicate the importance of both social norms and political orientation for influencing public support for SNAP and willingness to participate. Reducing stigma may require targeted messaging towards different demographic groups and program design that reduces potential for stigma in settings where benefits use is observable. In Chapter 3, I investigate the growth of online grocery purchasing with food vouchers across retailer markets and its effects on low-income households who use benefits. I collect new data on initial authorizations of Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) transactions online across more than 400 food retailers and all fifty states. Although the policy initially affected only SNAP, online purchases with new voucher programs for school children—Pandemic EBT and Summer EBT—were later covered under the authorizations. I find that stores authorized for online benefit purchases were more likely to be large retailers located in urban and higher-income neighborhoods compared to those authorized for in-store purchases only. Then, I use quasi-experimental spatial variation in EBT online purchasing availability to estimate effects on benefit redemption patterns and SNAP enrollment. The proliferation of online shopping for benefit users was expected to improve participant experiences by reducing stigma, improving convenience and access to food stores, and streamlining voucher purchases—despite facing service fees and potentially higher product prices online. I estimate that online EBT exposure led to a $16 increase in monthly online grocery spending per EBT-using household. Households substitute away from in-store spending at large food retailers. Finally, I find that online grocery purchasing availability increases local SNAP participation by 4 percent, primarily by increasing retention of existing participants. These results suggest that policies which streamline participants’ benefit redemption experiences can improve the effectiveness of in-kind benefit programs.