Full Citation
Title: The Impacts of the Introduction of the Food Stamp Program on Mortality
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2018
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Abstract: The Food Stamp Program (FSP, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) was introduced in the 1960s and 1970s. It provides benefits for eligible low-income households to use to purchase food. Through supplementing food consumption or freeing up income for other purposes, food stamp receipt may impact health outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impacts of the introduction of the FSP on various mortality rates. I use the program’s county-level rollout from 1961 to 1975 as a source of variation in access to food stamps in order to examine food stamps’ single-year and multi-year effects on various county- year level mortality rates using fixed effects models. I consider aggregate mortality rates, subgroup rates for sex, race groups, and age groups, and rates for specific causes of death to examine the mechanisms through which food stamps affect health. I draw mixed findings for the entire 1969 to 1978 county sample that indicate small overall effects of access to food stamps on mortality rates. However, among subsamples of poorer counties where the program’s introduction is likely to have a larger impact, I find that food stamps tend to reduce most mortality rates over time.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Jones, Jordan
Publisher: Georgia State University
Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Fertility and Mortality, Health, Other
Countries: United States