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Title: Do State SNAP Policies Influence Program Participation among Seniors?
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2021
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Abstract: Among those eligible to receive benefits, participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has traditionally been well below 100 percent, especially among seniors (Haider et al. 2003; Currie 2006). In 2014, 83 percent of eligible individuals of all ages participated in SNAP, but only 42 percent of eligible seniors (60 years and older) (Gray and Cunnyngham 2016). Despite this low participation rate, there is a persistent need for nutrition assistance among millions of seniors. In 2016, 13.6 percent of seniors in the United States were marginally food insecure, 7.7 percent were food insecure, and 2.9 percent had very low food security (Ziliak and Gundersen 2018). Existing research suggests that seniors are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity and may experience severe health consequences (Leroux et al. 2020). Relative to food secure seniors, food insecure seniors have lower nutrient intakes and are at a higher risk of a wide variety of adverse health conditions, including diabetes, depression, activities of daily living (ADL) limitations, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, heart attack, and asthma (Gundersen and Ziliak 2017). Although SNAP is thought of primarily as a federal program, states have been given the latitude to implement a number of policies beginning with welfare reform in 1996. These policies can increase SNAP eligibility by loosening the income and asset restrictions on households – and often do so more generously for households with seniors than without. Alternately, they can introduce or remove aspects of program administration that influence transaction costs or stigma, or they can increase program awareness through outreach. Ultimately, these state policies may substantially impact SNAP participation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of these policy changes on the SNAP participation of low-income senior households as compared to low-income non-senior households.To our knowledge, ours is the first paper to investigate the roles of several state SNAP policies in senior household participation decisions. Our primary dataset is the December Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement between 2001 and 2014. We collect detailed information on eleven state policies and estimate their impacts on the probability of household SNAP participation using a model with state and year fixed effects as well as controls for household characteristics. Then, in an effort to obtain more precise estimates, we re-estimate the models with a single “simulated eligibility” measure representing overall generosity of eligibility criteria in place of individual eligibility variables, the six policies related to transaction costs combined into a single count variable, and single stigma and outreach policies.
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Authors: Jones, Jordan; Courtemanche, Charles; Denteh, Augustine; Marton, James; Tchernis, Rusty
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Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Health, Poverty and Welfare
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