IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/arerjl/123311.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Financial Stress, and Childhood Obesity

Author

Listed:
  • Burgstahler, Rebecca
  • Gundersen, Craig
  • Garasky, Steven B.

Abstract

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest nutritional assistance program addressing food insecurity in the United States. Due to the program’s reach, SNAP has been called upon to address other nutrition-related challenges facing low-income Americans, including childhood obesity. This study considers the effect of SNAP participation on child weight outcomes after controlling for household financial stress, an important determinant of child overweight status that disproportionately affects low-income households. Using data from the Survey of Household Finances and Childhood Obesity and instrumental variable methods, we find that SNAP participation is negatively associated with obesity among eligible children.

Suggested Citation

  • Burgstahler, Rebecca & Gundersen, Craig & Garasky, Steven B., 2012. "The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Financial Stress, and Childhood Obesity," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 41(1), pages 1-14, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:arerjl:123311
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.123311
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/123311/files/gundersen%20-%20current.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.123311?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Breunig & Indraneel Dasgupta, 2005. "Do Intra-Household Effects Generate the Food Stamp Cash-Out Puzzle?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(3), pages 552-568.
    2. Richard A. DePolt & Robert A. Moffitt & David C. Ribar, 2009. "Food Stamps, Temporary Assistance For Needy Families And Food Hardships In Three American Cities," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(4), pages 445-473, October.
    3. Kaushal, N., 2007. "Do food stamps cause obesity?: Evidence from immigrant experience," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 968-991, September.
    4. Craig Gundersen & Susan Offutt, 2005. "Farm Poverty and Safety Nets," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(4), pages 885-899.
    5. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    6. Gundersen, Craig & Kreider, Brent & Pepper, John, 2012. "The impact of the National School Lunch Program on child health: A nonparametric bounds analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 166(1), pages 79-91.
    7. Brent Kreider & John V. Pepper & Craig Gundersen & Dean Jolliffe, 2012. "Identifying the Effects of SNAP (Food Stamps) on Child Health Outcomes When Participation Is Endogenous and Misreported," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(499), pages 958-975, September.
    8. Meyerhoefer, Chad D. & Pylypchuk, Vuriy, 2008. "AJAE Appendix: Does Participation in the Food Stamp Program Increase the Prevalence of Obesity and Health Care Spending?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics APPENDICES, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 90(2), pages 1-6.
    9. Craig Gundersen & Victor Oliveira, 2001. "The Food Stamp Program and Food Insufficiency," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 83(4), pages 875-887.
    10. Charles L. Baum, 2011. "The Effects of Food Stamps on Obesity," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 77(3), pages 623-651, January.
    11. Moffitt, Robert, 1983. "An Economic Model of Welfare Stigma," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(5), pages 1023-1035, December.
    12. Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, 2009. "Do School Lunches Contribute to Childhood Obesity?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(3).
    13. Steven T. Yen & Margaret Andrews & Zhuo Chen & David B. Eastwood, 2008. "Food Stamp Program Participation and Food Insecurity: An Instrumental Variables Approach," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 90(1), pages 117-132.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lorenzo Almada & Ian McCarthy & Rusty Tchernis, 2016. "What Can We Learn about the Effects of Food Stamps on Obesity in the Presence of Misreporting?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(4), pages 997-1017.
    2. Burney, Shaheer, 2015. "Household Consumption Responses to SNAP Participation," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205326, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Reimer, Jeffrey J. & Weerasooriya, Senal & West, Tyler T., 2015. "How Does the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Affect the U.S. Economy?," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(3), pages 233-252, December.
    4. Chien‐Yu Lai & John A List & Anya Samek, 2020. "Got Milk? Using Nudges to Reduce Consumption of Added Sugar," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(1), pages 154-168, January.
    5. Maoyong Fan & Yanhong Jin, 2015. "The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Childhood Obesity in the United States: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 432-460, Fall.
    6. repec:ags:afjare:225656 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Hudak, Katelin M. & Racine, Elizabeth F., 2021. "Do additional SNAP benefits matter for child weight?: Evidence from the 2009 benefit increase," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    8. Burney, Shaheer, 2018. "In-kind benefits and household behavior: The impact of SNAP on food-away-from-home consumption," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 134-146.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lorenzo Almada & Ian McCarthy & Rusty Tchernis, 2016. "What Can We Learn about the Effects of Food Stamps on Obesity in the Presence of Misreporting?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(4), pages 997-1017.
    2. Susan Chen & Le Wang, 2021. "SNAP participation, diet quality, and obesity: robust evidence with estimation techniques without external instrumental variables," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 1641-1667, September.
    3. Maximilian D. Schmeiser, 2012. "The impact of long‐term participation in the supplemental nutrition assistance program on child obesity," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(4), pages 386-404, April.
    4. Salois, Matthew & Balcombe, Kelvin, 2011. "Do Food Stamps Cause Obesity? A Generalised Bayesian Instrumental Variable Approach in the Presence of Heteroscedasticity," MPRA Paper 28745, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Chad D. Meyerhoefer & Muzhe Yang, 2011. "The Relationship between Food Assistance and Health: A Review of the Literature and Empirical Strategies for Identifying Program Effects," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 33(3), pages 304-344.
    6. Wang, Julia Shu-Huah & Zhao, Xi & Nam, Jaehyun, 2021. "The effects of welfare participation on parenting stress and parental engagement using an instrumental variables approach: Evidence from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    7. Nathalie Mathieu‐Bolh, 2022. "The elusive link between income and obesity," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 935-968, September.
    8. Gregory, Christian A. & Deb, Partha, 2015. "Does SNAP improve your health?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 11-19.
    9. Brent Kreider & John V. Pepper & Craig Gundersen & Dean Jolliffe, 2012. "Identifying the Effects of SNAP (Food Stamps) on Child Health Outcomes When Participation Is Endogenous and Misreported," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(499), pages 958-975, September.
    10. Wilson, Norbert L. W. & Zheng, Yuqing & Burney, Shaheer & Kaiser, Harry M., 2016. "Do Grocery Food Sales Taxes Cause Food Insecurity?," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235324, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    11. Tiehen, Laura & Jolliffe, Dean & Gundersen, Craig, 2012. "How State Policies Influence the Efficacy of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in Reducing Poverty," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124937, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    12. Manan Roy & Daniel Millimet & Rusty Tchernis, 2012. "Federal nutrition programs and childhood obesity: inside the black box," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 1-38, March.
    13. Cawley, John, 2015. "An economy of scales: A selective review of obesity's economic causes, consequences, and solutions," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 244-268.
    14. Tiehen, Laura & Jolliffe, Dean & Gundersen, Craig, 2012. "Alleviating Poverty in the United States: The Critical Role of SNAP Benefits," Economic Research Report 262233, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    15. Irma Arteaga & Colleen Heflin & Leslie Hodges, 2018. "SNAP Benefits and Pregnancy-Related Emergency Room Visits," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 37(6), pages 1031-1052, December.
    16. Helen H. Jensen & Brent Kreider & Oleksandr Zhylyevskyy, 2019. "Investigating Treatment Effects of Participating Jointly in SNAP and WIC when the Treatment Is Validated Only for SNAP," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(1), pages 124-155, July.
    17. Carpio, Carlos E. & Boonsaeng, Tullaya & Chen, Zhen & Okrent, Abigail, 2014. "The Effect of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Food and Nonfood Spending Among Low-Income Households," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170650, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Burney, Shaheer, 2018. "In-kind benefits and household behavior: The impact of SNAP on food-away-from-home consumption," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 134-146.
    19. Almada, Lorenzo N. & Tchernis, Rusty, 2018. "Measuring effects of SNAP on obesity at the intensive margin," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 150-163.
    20. MacEwan, Joanna P. & Smith, Aaron & Alston, Julian M., 2016. "The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, energy balance, and weight gain," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 103-120.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:arerjl:123311. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nareaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.