Are SNAP benefits adequate? A geographical and food expenditure decomposition

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides resources to supplement household food expenditures in order to achieve a nutritious diet. Determining the amount of support required - or extent of food expenditure poverty -- entails comparing available resources for food to a nutrition-determined threshold. Clearly the value of the threshold will affect the degree of food expenditure poverty. If the threshold value is inaccurate, the calculated degree of poverty will be inaccurate. USDA uses a threshold for setting SNAP benefits that does not vary geographically or temporally, so consequently (food expenditure) poverty may be understated or overstated in different regions and time periods. This article compares food expenditure poverty estimates for SNAP participants when geographical differences in the threshold are ignored versus not ignored. In addition, the article decomposes household food expenditures into Food-Away-From-Home (FAFH), Food-at-Home (FAH), personal funded FAH, and SNAP funded FAH in order to assess the degree to which each of these contribute to reducing food expenditure poverty. The general findings are that all food expenditure poverty measures are worse when geographical differences are taken into account. In addition, the analysis shows that FAH expenditures, and in particular SNAP FAH expenditures, contribute the most to reducing food expenditure poverty in SNAP households. The policy implications are that food expenditure poverty is currently underestimated in the US by ignoring geographical differences in thresholds, but the food expenditure poverty would be even worse without SNAP benefits. Geographical adjustments to the national threshold could help reduce food expenditure poverty across regions.     

Does how you pay influence the share of healthy items that you Buy? Assessing differences in nutritional quality of food purchases by payment type

Shoppers that use cash as a form of payment are more likely to evaluate the necessity of an item they purchase than shoppers that pay with other forms of payment, such as credit cards. In this paper, we hypothesize that the use of cash may nudge shoppers to buy more healthful food items. We empirically evaluate whether the payment method affects the nutritional quality of food purchases. We also test whether the effect of payment type differs between food-at-home and food-away-from-home events. Specifically, we test whether shoppers purchase a higher share of nutritious food items when they pay with cash compared to when they use credit and debit cards. We use the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) data that tracks individual’s food purchases over one week. Using the Guiding Stars Program (GSP) algorithm to measure the nutritional quality of food items, we calculate the share of healthy items purchased at each event. We find that shoppers using cash purchase a higher share of healthy items than when they use credit or debit cards, and this nudging effect is primarily driven by food-away-from-home purchases.     

The effects of food sales taxes on household food spending: An application of a censored cluster model

This study proposes a model of household food spending that accounts for zero censoring and can be applied to data collected through a clustered survey design to investigate the impact of food sales taxes on three groups: households who are eligible for and participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), households who are eligible but do not participate in the program, and households who are not eligible for the program. We find that SNAP participating households are largely insensitive to grocery taxes and respond to restaurant taxes by shifting more of their food dollars towards at-home foods. Among households who are eligible for SNAP but do not participate in the program, grocery taxes reduce spending on foods purchased for at-home consumption, and thereby increase the amount of the total food budget allocated to away from home foods. This is concerning from a nutrition and health standpoint since away from home foods tend to be more calorie dense and nutritionally poorer than at home foods.