The impacts of SNAP benefit reductions on participation: Evidence from emergency allotment expirations

IF 6 1区经济学 Q1 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY

Food Policy Pub Date : 2025-09-16 DOI:10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102950

Jordan W. Jones , Reem Hashad

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

From 2020 to 2023, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were supplemented by emergency allotments (EA) which, unlike regular benefits, were larger for SNAP households with higher net income. Several states ended EA issuance early before a nationwide expiration in early 2023, resulting in sharp monthly benefit reductions. We employ a staggered difference-in-differences approach to estimate the impacts of benefit reductions resulting from EA expiration on SNAP participation rates, investigating the roles of changing initial application and recertification rates in explaining these impacts, suggesting underlying changes in the returns to participation and household decision-making. We also employ interaction models to examine how impacts differed with income, extending these models to further investigate the role of income in EA expiration’s impacts on food insufficiency. Results indicate that early EA expiration reduced the SNAP participation rate by 1.48 percentage points on average. This reduction grew over time following expiration and was driven by a reduction in the number of initial applications to SNAP. Further, we estimate that reductions in SNAP participation were concentrated among relatively higher-income households who would have experienced larger reductions in benefit levels. We estimate a 3.10 percentage point increase in food insufficiency among households with income below the federal poverty level, and we find no corresponding evidence of increases for relatively higher-income households.

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SNAP福利减少对参与的影响：来自紧急拨款到期的证据

从2020年到2023年，补充营养援助计划（SNAP）的福利得到了紧急拨款（EA）的补充，与常规福利不同，对净收入较高的SNAP家庭来说，紧急拨款的数额更大。在2023年初全国范围内的EA到期之前，有几个州提前结束了EA的发放，导致每月的福利大幅减少。我们采用了一种交错差中差方法来估计EA到期导致的福利减少对SNAP参与率的影响，研究了初始申请和重新认证率变化在解释这些影响中的作用，表明参与回报和家庭决策的潜在变化。我们还采用交互作用模型来研究影响与收入的差异，并扩展这些模型来进一步研究收入在EA到期对食物不足的影响中的作用。结果表明，EA提前到期使SNAP参与率平均降低1.48个百分点。随着到期后的时间推移，这种减少有所增加，这是由于SNAP的初始申请数量减少所致。此外，我们估计，SNAP参与的减少集中在收入相对较高的家庭中，这些家庭的福利水平会出现更大的下降。我们估计，在收入低于联邦贫困线的家庭中，食物不足的情况增加了3.10个百分点，而在收入相对较高的家庭中，我们没有发现相应的证据。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Food Policy 管理科学-农业经济与政策

CiteScore

11.40

自引率

4.60%

发文量

128

审稿时长

62 days

期刊介绍： Food Policy is a multidisciplinary journal publishing original research and novel evidence on issues in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of policies for the food sector in developing, transition, and advanced economies. Our main focus is on the economic and social aspect of food policy, and we prioritize empirical studies informing international food policy debates. Provided that articles make a clear and explicit contribution to food policy debates of international interest, we consider papers from any of the social sciences. Papers from other disciplines (e.g., law) will be considered only if they provide a key policy contribution, and are written in a style which is accessible to a social science readership.