Identifying the Effects of WIC on Food Insecurity Among Infants and Children

The Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program is considered a crucial component of the social safety net in the United States, yet there is limited supporting evidence on the effects of WIC on the nutritional well‐being and food security of infants and young children. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, we apply recently developed partial identification methods to jointly account for unobserved counterfactual outcomes and systematic underreporting of WIC participation. Under nonparametric assumptions, we find that WIC reduces the prevalence of child food insecurity by at least 3.6 percentage points (20%).     

Food, nutrition, and substitution in the late nineteenth century

Economic historians hypothesize that households in the nineteenth century substituted away from carbohydrates and fiber and towards protein and fat as their incomes rose. Anthropometric historians assert that there was increased nutrient intake without any nutritional substitution. I test these hypotheses using the 1888 Cost of Living Survey. I fail to reject the hypothesis that the income elasticity of fiber is greater than or equal to the income elasticities of protein, fat, or sugar—contrary to the nutritional substitution posited by economic historians. A food modified Engel curve reveals that the shares of carbohydrates, fat, and sugar in the diet vary with household income, but the shares of protein and fiber do not. I do find, however, that the share of protein from animal sources increases with household income. I also find that the diets of late nineteenth century industrial workers were surprisingly balanced by modern standards.     

Welfare receipt and the intergenerational transmission of work‐welfare norms

This article investigates the role of welfare receipt in shaping norms regarding work and welfare using unique Australian data from the Youth in Focus Project. We begin by incorporating welfare into a theoretical model of the transmission of work‐welfare norms across generations. Consistent with the predictions of this model, we find evidence that youths' attitudes toward work and welfare may be influenced by socialization within their families. Young people are more likely to oppose generous social benefits and to believe that social inequality stems from individual characteristics if (i) their mothers support these views; (ii) their mothers were employed while they were growing up; and (iii) their families never received welfare. Finally, youths' work‐welfare norms appear to be unrelated to their neighbors' welfare receipt suggesting that socialization occurs primarily within families rather than within neighborhoods.     

Identifying the Link Between Food Security and Incarceration

Previous work has found that incarceration (defined as confinement in an adult correctional facility) has a variety of impacts on the incarcerated individual and their families including effects on employment and income, educational outcomes of children, and food insecurity (Wallace and Cox 2012 ). However, previous literature does not identify a causal impact of incarceration on food insecurity. From a policy perspective, identification of a causal link may aid in understanding why some affected families experience food insecurity, while similarly situated families do not. In this article, we utilize microlevel data from the Fragile Families and Child Well Being Study to provide evidence of a causal impact of incarceration on food insecurity. This is an important dynamic to understand because the prevalence of incarceration in the United States is relatively high, especially among groups where food insecurity is more prevalent (e.g., Blacks), and the associated externalities can have substantial impacts on families that may reach well beyond traditional costs associated with incarceration. The complex relationship between food insecurity and incarceration is estimated within a causal inference approach. We find evidence that incarceration leads to roughly a 4 percentage point increase in the likelihood of food insecurity among households with children that have experienced a parental incarceration.     

WIC Participation and Relative Quality of Household Food Purchases: Evidence from FoodAPS

We examine the effect of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on the quality of household food purchases using the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) and propensity score matching. A healthy purchasing index (HPI) is used to measure nutritional quality of household food purchases. WIC foods explain the improvement in quality of food purchases, not self‐selection of more nutrition‐conscious households into the program. The improvement in purchase quality was driven entirely by WIC participating households who redeemed WIC foods during the interview week. There was no significant difference between WIC participants who did not redeem WIC foods and eligible nonparticipants. In this sample, there is no evidence that lack of access to clinics has adverse effects on participation nor is there evidence that HPI depends on supermarket access. A supervised machine learning process supports our main conclusion on the importance of WIC foods.     

The Effect of SNAP and School Food Programs on Food Security,Diet Quality,and Food Spending: Sensitivity to Program Reporting Error

There is an extensive research literature on the effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on food‐related outcomes which has shown somewhat mixed results but generally favorable effects. However, most of the research has used data sets whose information on SNAP participation is gathered from responses on household surveys, and such responses are subject to reporting error. This study uses the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey data set to examine the effect of reporting error on food‐related outcomes, for that data set contains information on SNAP participation gathered from government administrative records. Our analysis shows that the degree of reporting error is small and has little effect on the estimated impact of participation in the SNAP program on food security, diet quality, and food spending. A supplemental analysis of the effect of school food programs likewise shows no difference in using survey or administrative data in the analysis.     

Income Disparity among Persons with Disabilities,Assessed by Education and Sex: Accentuated Gender Difference Found in Metro Manila,the Philippines

How do persons with disabilities (PWDs) earn a living? This paper presents an investigation of the economic activities of PWDs in the Philippines, where, among developing countries, disability‐related legislation is relatively progressive. In 2008, a field survey was conducted in cooperation with Disability People's Organizations using a tailor‐made questionnaire in Metro Manila. The explanatory variables of income of PWDs were examined using Mincer regression. The conclusions are as follows. (1) There is remarkable income disparity among PWDs, differing with education and sex. (2) After controlling for PWDs' characteristics, it was found that female PWDs are likely to earn less than male PWDs. Such a significant income gap between men and women among PWDs is remarkable in the Philippines, where gender difference in income is generally small. This finding suggests that female PWDs are doubly disadvantaged in earning income.     

刍议完善我国粮食安全预警机制的三个核心问题

我国的粮食安全预警机制的完善涉及到三个核心问题。一是有关粮食安全预警的组织机构问题。缺乏一个权责明确的预警机构,粮食安全预警机制作用就难以发挥。二是有关粮食安全预警的信息采集问题。粮食安全的信息量十分巨大,其撷取的方法是否精准及衡量粮食安全的指标体系的选择是否得当,直接关系到粮食安全预警的效用与价值。三是如何将粮食安全预警的信息传递给有关职能部门的问题,这需要构建一套规范的运作程序。     

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

The U.S. Department of Agriculture operates several food assistance programs aimed at alleviating food insecurity. We study whether participation in both participation in both SNAP and WIC 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 when validation data are available for one program (treatment) but not the other. We estimate average treatment effects using data from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS). FoodAPS includes administrative data to validate SNAP participation. Information on local food prices allows us to construct a food expenditure‐based monotone instrumental variable that does not require a typical instrumental variable exclusion restriction. Under relatively weak monotonicity assumptions, we identify that the impact of participating in both programs relative to SNAP alone is strictly positive, suggesting that the programs are nonredundant. This evidence can support improved design and targeting of food programs.     

Estimating the Associations between SNAP and Food Insecurity,Obesity, and Food Purchases with Imperfect Administrative Measures of Participation

Administrative data are considered the “gold standard” when measuring program participation, but little evidence exists on their potential problems or implications for econometric estimates. We explore these issues using the FoodAPS, a unique data set containing two different administrative measures of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation and a survey‐based measure. We document substantial ambiguity in the two administrative measures and show that they disagree with each other almost as often as they disagree with self‐reported participation. Estimated participation and misreporting rates can be meaningfully sensitive to choices made to resolve this ambiguity and disagreement. We explore sensitivity in regression estimates of the associations between SNAP and food insecurity, obesity, and the healthy eating index. The signs are unchanged across the three measures, and the estimates are mostly not statistically different from each other. However, there are some meaningful differences in the magnitudes and levels of statistical significance of the estimates.     

简析2001年中国证券市场运行格局

证券市场的政策导向是左右股市运行的重要因素,加强监管成为今午中国证券市场的主要任务。2001年的中国股市也将对此作出相应的反应,大箱体内的震荡运行将成为今年股市的主要运行趋势。     

The Effect of the Tipped Minimum Wage on Employees in the U.S. Restaurant Industry

According to federal law in 2013, employers can take a credit of up to $5.12 for tips received by workers in satisfying the minimum‐wage requirement of $7.25. This article uses interstate variation in laws regarding tip credits and minimum wages to identify the effects of reducing or eliminating the tip credit on employment, hours, and earnings in the U.S. restaurant industry. Using data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and the Current Population Survey, we find that a reduction in the tip credit increases weekly earnings but reduces employment in the full‐service restaurant industry and for tipped workers. The results are robust to controls for spatial heterogeneity in employment trends and are supported by a series of falsification tests.     

The effect of bank account ownership on credit and consumption: Evidence from the UK

This article examines the causal effects of bank account ownership on credit access and consumption by isolating an exogenous change in account ownership produced by an electronic transfer mandate in the universal UK Child Benefit program. Comparing households with and without children finds that the mandate substantially affected banking behavior, with an 8.6% relative increase in transaction account ownership. When households transition into account ownership, results indicate large increases in credit card ownership (89%), and household durable goods (55%). Similar changes are not seen in loan use, weekly expenditures, or vehicle ownership. Additional evidence from a panel data set indicate declines in the use of fringe bank credit, informal loans, and debt after households transition into bank account ownership. In total, evidence suggests that an important effect of owning a bank account is improved access to credit cards which enables durable good consumption.     

安全投入与安全指标关系的实例分析

根据某地区所给相关数据,采用最小二乘法、线性回归法,分析该地区安全投入与劳保投入之间的关系;事故次数与伤亡人数之间的关系;以及安全指标与安全水平之间的关系。     

新型农业经营主体培育的几点解析——以胶州市为例

新型农业经营主体的培育是构建现代农业经营体系的必然选择。家庭农场、农民专业合作社和农业企业等多种形式的新型农业经营主体优势也逐渐凸显,表现出发展速度快、经营方式灵活以及辐射带动明显的特点,成为中国现代农业发展的中坚力量。通过对胶州市家庭农场、农民专业合作社和农业企业等形式的农业经营主体调查分析,指出应规范制定发展规划、完善扶持力度、创新土地流转制度和注重品牌服务等举措,同时还应加大扶持力度,规范土地流转制度,强化规范管理以及发展社会化服务等方面来培育新型农业经营主体。     

基于粮食安全和指数平滑模型的耕地保有量预测研究——以福建省宁德市为例

耕地保有量对于一个地区粮食安全、经济安全、生态安全和社会稳定等都具有重要意义。本文以福建省宁德市为例,根据耕地、人口、粮食等指标的统计数据,采用基于粮食安全的耕地需求法和指数平滑模型两种方法对2010至2015年的耕地保有量进行预测,并进行综合预测分析,结果分别为139 727hm2、136 037hm2、137 907hm2、134 962hm2、134962hm2、134 122hm2、155 496hm2。而后提出了加强耕地保护的相关对策建议。     

安徽省粮食安全的影响因素分析

安徽是农业大省,如果出现粮食安全问题,不仅会给安徽省的社会稳定带来重大影响,同时也会对全国的粮食供应造成不利影响。文章认为影响安徽省粮食安全的是耕地数量和质量不断下降、政策扶持力度不够、农业生产基础设施薄弱和农村劳动力素质较低等四个因素,并提出相应措施。