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USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides food and nutrition benefits to low-income households based on a formula that adjusts the benefit amount a household receives based on monthly need. This study assesses the extent to which SNAP reaches the poorest households, also known as benefit targeting, by estimating benefit receipt by annual household income relative to poverty. To conduct this analysis, ERS linked 2008-12 SNAP administrative records from New York State to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), a primary source for national, State, and local information on the use of SNAP and other public assistance programs. The linked data provide better information on SNAP receipt than that which would be estimated by the ACS alone and permit a more complete characterization of SNAP targeting. Study findings show that the assessment of SNAP targeting varies by the three measures of benefit receipt examined. Estimates of SNAP targeting toward low-income households improve when using either of two measures of intensity of SNAP participation relative to measures of ever-in-the-year participation. Replacing survey-based data on SNAP benefit receipt with administrative records of SNAP benefit receipt and adjusting the survey households to more closely reflect administrative SNAP units also improves estimates of targeting to low-income participants. Finally, estimated program targeting is improved by removing sample households that do not report income and for which income is imputed in the survey from the analysis.

This report provides nationally representative annual estimates for 2004-09 of households’ multi-program or “joint” participation patterns in both the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program, including breakouts of household types categorized by household income relative to poverty, race/ethnicity, and education level. SNAP and UI are two strands of the Nation’s recessionary safety net—the subset of safety-net programs for which participation is responsive to the business cycle. Using data from the Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) Supplement to the Current Population Survey, the study found that an estimated 14.4 percent of SNAP households also received UI at some time in 2009 (a recessionary year), an increase of 6.6 percentage points from 2005 (a full-employment year). Conversely, an estimated 13.4 percent of UI households also received SNAP in 2009, an increase of 2.3 percentage points from 2005. SNAP households with lower annual income relative to poverty or with householders who did not complete high school were relatively less likely to also have UI, indicating that these populations were relatively more likely to rely on SNAP benefits alone (without UI).

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 increased Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit levels and expanded SNAP eligibility for jobless adults without children. After these enhancements, SNAP participation and inflation-adjusted food spending by low-income households increased. Food insecurity declined by 2.2 percentage points among low-income households but was unchanged among households with incomes somewhat above SNAP-eligibility cutoffs.

The Food Stamp Program provides benefits that low-income households can use to purchase food in grocery stores. The rise in obesity has raised the question of whether food stamp participants would purchase more healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables, if food stamp benefits were higher. This report examines household food spending patterns and how they differ across income levels to provide insight into how participants might change their food spending in response to additional income.

Food stamp recipients, like other Americans, struggle with nutrition problems associated with choice of foods, as well as amounts. This series of Economic Information Bulletins compiles evidence to help answer the question of whether the Food Stamp Program can do more to improve the food choices of participants. It examines the role of affordability and price of healthful foods in influencing food choices and the likely success of any policy targeted at changing food choices through food stamp bonuses or restrictions. It also examines other approaches to changing food choices, including nutrition education and potential strategies drawn from behavioral economics literature. Meaningful improvements in the diets of food stamp recipients will likely depend on a combination of many tactics. Measuring the effect of any policy change on food choices and health outcomes remains a challenge.

This report develops an economic model that provides the theoretical framework for the econometric analyses presented in the report's companion volume, WIC and the Retail Price of Infant Formula (FANRR-39). The model examines supermarket retail prices for infant formula in a local market area, and identifies the theoretical effects of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and its infant formula rebate program. Special attention is given to the rebate program's sole-source procurement system by which a single manufacturer becomes a State's "contract brand"-the State's one supplier of formula to WIC infants-in exchange for paying rebates to WIC. When a manufacturer's brand is designated a State's contract brand, the model predicts that supermarkets increase that brand's retail price. The model also predicts that an increase in the ratio of WIC to non-WIC formula-fed infants in a local market results in an increase in the price of the contract brand and, through demand substitution, a relatively small price increase for noncontract brands.

The Second Food Security Measurement and Research Conference (February 23-24, 1999) was co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service and Economic Research Service and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Center for Health Satistics. The conference was the second in a series and was attended by researchers from government, academia, and the private sector. The conference was part of an ongoing program of Federal food security research, the goal of which has been to establish a stable measurement strategy to assess annually the food security status of the U. S. population. This report is volume 1 of a two-volume set and contains abbreviated proceedings of all presentations and remarks by discussants at all sessions from the conference. The companion publication, Second Food Security Measurement and Research Conference. Volume II: Papers (February 2001, Stock # ERS-FANRR-11-2) contains a set of research papers that conference participants prepared to provide further detail on the content and findings of some research presented at the conference.

With 1.5 billion people covered globally, food and voucher programs provide an important lifeline for the poor and vulnerable. The study is the 1.5 Billion People Question: Food, Vouchers or Cash Transfers? reveals that while countries increasingly support people with cash as a form of safety net, food-based programs are still important interventions in some contexts. The analysis highlights how food and voucher programs remain relevant, and in most circumstances, have improved over time.It is against such a backdrop that this book explores how to genuinely integrate the agendas of social protection and food assistance. To be clear: over the past decades, efforts to introduce, expand, and upgrade social protection systems in low- and middle-income countries primarily revolved around cash transfers—and for good reasons. At the same time, about 1.5 billion people worldwide have been covered by in-kind food programs, 1 billion of whom live in countries examined in this volume. In-kind transfers have been a key vehicle to provide income support to poor consumers; but, on average, they have often done so at high cost and as part of broader agricultural support and food price risk management efforts. In other words,in-kind programs can generate technical and political economy quandaries that go well beyond income support to poor consumers.The book provides a long-awaited and very much-needed analysis on such a shift: when viewed through the lenses of history, countries are increasingly moving from in-kind provisions to cash-based transfers, often with vouchers as an intermediate step. Yet this process is far from straightforward, and it is checkered by the bumpy and erratic pathways of evolution. In particular, the book argues that many of the precursors of current cash transfer programs were in-kind measures and that such measures are still relevant in certain circumstances. The volume’s analysis—one at the intersection of economics, political economy, politics, sociology, and history—would help debunk some long-standing myths about food assistance, highlight the complex and inter- twined objectives pursued by well-intentioned food programs, and identify insightful lessons from reform processes that are, regrettably, seldom available internationally.