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Food insecurity is widespread among college students in the United States. Food benefits delivered through the CalFresh program, California's version of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), can reduce hunger by helping students pay for groceries, but may not reach all eligible students. To date, higher education systems have lacked good estimates of the share of their students who are eligible for CalFresh and the share who actually receive benefits. To address this information gap, the California Policy Lab (CPL) partnered with the California Community College (CCC) Chancellor's Office, the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), and the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC) to build a linked database of student-level administrative data on college enrollment, financial aid, and CalFresh participation. This database covers all students enrolled at CCC or UC campuses from academic years 2010-11 through 2021-22, along with corresponding FAFSA submissions and CalFresh participation. Using these data, we are able to measure how many college students are likely eligible for CalFresh, and of those how many participate. CalFresh eligibility does not perfectly overlap with student need. Some students who are food insecure may not be eligible for benefits, while some eligible students may not be in great need. This in part reflects the rules of the program, which are designed to capture need but do not always do so perfectly. We attempt to measure eligibility according to the actual rules. Our estimates complement other work that uses survey data to measure students' basic needs (California Community Colleges League, 2022). We estimate that in Fall 2019, on the eve of the COVID pandemic, 16% of California community college students (256,000 students), 31% of UC undergraduate students (69,000 students), and 6% of UC graduate students (3,000 students) were likely eligible for CalFresh benefits. However, the majority of these students did not receive benefits -- only 30% of eligible community college students, 22% of eligible UC undergraduates, and 29% of eligible UC graduate students were actually enrolled in CalFresh. We emphasize that our eligibility determinations are estimates based on information available in existing data, which imperfectly capture some elements of the CalFresh eligibility determination process. They may somewhat overstate or understate student eligibility. However, extensive investigation led us to conclude that the errors are likely not large and that our estimates are a good approximation of the share of students who would be found eligible under individualized determinations. As we discuss below, the higher eligibility rate among UC undergraduates as compared to CCC students reflects program rules that make it easier for UC students to qualify than for CCC students with similar resources. We also find differences in eligibility across groups of students within each segment, reflecting both variation in need and program rules. Among both CCC and UC students, Black and Hispanic students, for example, are more likely to be eligible than are White or Asian American students, and students receiving federal, state, or institutional financial aid are much more likely to be eligible than are students not receiving aid. Benefits receipt generally mirrors this, although there are differences across groups in the share of eligible students who receive benefits. The take-up rate, which is the share of eligible students who participate in CalFresh, is higher for Black students (and, at the UC but not at CCCs, Hispanic students) than for White students, and for students on financial aid than for students who are not. Our report indicates there is much room to improve CalFresh participation among eligible students. Through detailed analyses of the paths to eligibility and of variation in participation rates, we hope to shed light on opportunities for policymakers, higher education administrators, community-based organizations, student groups, and advocates to better connect eligible students to benefits. [Additional support was provided by the Woven Foundation.]

CalFresh benefits can help college students make ends meet while attending college, but not all eligible students apply. One contributing factor may be that students are not aware they are eligible. Therefore, outreach efforts informing them of their eligibility could help increase take-up rates. To test this, we designed and conducted two experiments that leveraged an expansion in CalFresh eligibility for students that went into effect in early 2021. In response to the pandemic, Congress permitted a temporary expansion to college student eligibility for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), or CalFresh as it is known in California. The expansion went into effect in January 2021 and will last through the end of the federal public health emergency. The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) and the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC) partnered with The People Lab (TPL) and the California Policy Lab (CPL) on two randomized experiments to evaluate whether outreach about this policy change could increase the number of students who applied for and eventually enrolled in CalFresh. One experiment, conducted in February and March 2021, tested the impact of email outreach. The second, conducted in June 2021, tested the relative effectiveness of different messages and modes of communication on the same group of students who were newly eligible. This brief reports the results of the first experiment.1 In a randomized experiment with 285,731 California college students who were eligible under the temporary expansion and were not already receiving CalFresh in January 2021, we found that an email from CSAC led roughly 2-3% of recipients to apply for benefits through GetCalFresh.org within a week of receiving the email. The increase in applications translated into an increase in CalFresh enrollment of 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points. Effects were even larger for students who received a second follow-up email. [The report was published by the California Policy Lab (CPL).]

Food insecurity is widespread among college students in the United States. CalFresh food benefits, known federally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, can help students in California pay for food, but may not reach all eligible students. CalFresh enrollment rates among students have been difficult to estimate due to incomplete data on California students' eligibility for and enrollment in the CalFresh program.1 To overcome these issues, the California Policy Lab (CPL) partnered with the California Community College system (CCC), the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), and the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC) to build a linked database of student-level administrative data on college enrollment, financial aid, and CalFresh participation. [This research was in partnership with the California Community College system (CCC), the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), and the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC), with support from the Bylo Chacon Foundation.]