IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/uersib/134682.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Economic Conditions Affect Participation in USDA Nutrition Assistance Programs

Author

Listed:
  • Hanson, Kenneth
  • Oliveira, Victor

Abstract

This study, based on 1976-2010 data, examines the relationship between U.S. economic conditions and participation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s five largest nutrition assistance programs. It also describes how changes in program policy and other factors may have influenced this relationship. The five programs are: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), National School Lunch Program (NSLP), School Breakfast Program (SBP), and Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). Although SNAP’s reputation as one of the Nation’s primary counter-cyclical assistance programs—expanding during economic downturns and contracting during periods of economic growth—is well established, there has been little analysis of the effect of the economy on the other programs. The results of this study strongly suggest that, to varying degrees, economic conditions influence participation in all the major nutrition assistance programs, not just in SNAP.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanson, Kenneth & Oliveira, Victor, 2012. "How Economic Conditions Affect Participation in USDA Nutrition Assistance Programs," Economic Information Bulletin 134682, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:uersib:134682
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.134682
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/134682/files/eib100.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.134682?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:mpr:mprres:1014 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Sichel, Daniel E, 1993. "Business Cycle Asymmetry: A Deeper Look," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 31(2), pages 224-236, April.
    3. Hanson, Kenneth & Oliveira, Victor, 2007. "The 2005 Gulf Coast Hurricanes' Effect On Food Stamp Program Caseloads And Benefits Issued," Economic Research Report 7259, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. Neftci, Salih N, 1984. "Are Economic Time Series Asymmetric over the Business Cycle?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(2), pages 307-328, April.
    5. repec:mpr:mprres:6321 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Jacob Alex Klerman & Caroline Danielson, 2011. "The transformation of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 863-888, September.
    7. repec:mpr:mprres:3960 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Oliveira, Victor, 2011. "Food Assistance Landscape: FY 2010 Annual Report," Economic Information Bulletin 291949, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    9. Hanson, Kenneth & Gundersen, Craig, 2002. "Issues In Food Assistance - How Unemployment Affects The Food Stamp Program," Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Reports 262257, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    10. Mabli, James & Martin, Emily Sama & Castner, Laura, 2009. "Effects of Economic Conditions and Program Policy on State Food Stamp Program Caseloads, 2000 to 2006," Contractor and Cooperator Reports 292076, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    11. repec:mpr:mprres:2804 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Swann Christopher A, 2010. "WIC Eligibility and Participation: The Roles of Changing Policies, Economic Conditions, and Demographics," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-37, March.
    13. James Mabli & Emily Sama Martin & Laura Castner, "undated". "Effects of Economic Conditions and Program Policy on State Food Stamp Program Caseloads, 2000 to 2006," Mathematica Policy Research Reports ec950dbf29b04dca965ac615e, Mathematica Policy Research.
    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. Melvin, Shamar & Smith, Travis A., 2022. "From paper to plastic: How the transition to EBT affected SNAP enrollment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    2. Vogel, Stephen & Miller, Cristina & Ralston, Katherine, 2021. "Impact of USDA's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on Rural and Urban Economies in the Aftermath of the Great Recession," USDA Miscellaneous 314934, United States Department of Agriculture.
    3. Oliveira, Victor & Frazao, Elizabeth, 2015. "The WIC Program: Background, Trends, and Economic Issues, 2015 Edition," Economic Information Bulletin 197543, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. Simpson, Nicole B., 2013. "Families, Taxes and the Welfare System," IZA Discussion Papers 7369, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Suttles, Shellye & Babb, Angela & Knudsen, Daniel C., 2024. "Submitted and Denied: Understanding variation in case status across Supplemental Nutrition assistance program (SNAP) applications," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    6. Hodges, Leslie & Toossi, Saied & Todd, Jessica E. & Ryan-Claytor, Cayley, 2024. "The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC): Background, Trends, and Economic Issues, 2024 Edition," Economic Information Bulletin 341637, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    7. Suttles, Shellye A. & Babb, Angela & Knudsen, Daniel, 2022. "Submitted and Denied: Understanding Variation in Case Status Across Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Applications," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322195, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    8. Danielson, Caroline & Klerman, Jacob Alex & Mejia, Marisol Cuellar, 2013. "Does the Economy Explain the Explosion in the SNAP Caseload?," 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, D.C. 150558, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    9. Peter Ganong & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 2018. "The Decline, Rebound, and Further Rise in SNAP Enrollment: Disentangling Business Cycle Fluctuations and Policy Changes," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 153-176, November.
    10. Hoang, Hoa K. & Westhoff, Patrick & Thompson, Wyatt & Madison, Daniel & Whistance, Jarrett, 2022. "Determinants and trajectories of federal expenditures on SNAP: The role of food prices," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322084, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    11. Oliveira, Victor & Prell, Mark & Tiehen, Laura & Smallwood, David, 2018. "Design Issues in USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Looking Ahead by Looking Back," Economic Research Report 276253, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    12. Gregory Golino & Katherine Ralston & Joanne Guthrie, 2021. "Participation Trends for Full Price Meals in the National School Lunch Program," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(3), pages 1161-1175, September.

    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. Peter Ganong & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 2018. "The Decline, Rebound, and Further Rise in SNAP Enrollment: Disentangling Business Cycle Fluctuations and Policy Changes," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 153-176, November.
    2. Cancian, Maria & Han, Eunhee & Noyes, Jennifer L., 2014. "From multiple program participation to disconnection: Changing trajectories of TANF and SNAP beneficiaries in Wisconsin," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 91-102.
    3. Allan D. Brunner, 1997. "On The Dynamic Properties Of Asymmetric Models Of Real GNP," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(2), pages 321-352, May.
    4. Richard H. Clarida & Mark P. Taylor, 2003. "Nonlinear Permanent - Temporary Decompositions in Macroeconomics and Finance," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(486), pages 125-139, March.
    5. Li, Shuyun May & Dressler, Scott, 2011. "Business cycle asymmetry via occasionally binding international borrowing constraints," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 33-41, March.
    6. Toshiya Ishikawa, 2004. "Technology Diffusion and Business Cycle Asymmetry," DEGIT Conference Papers c009_016, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    7. Skalin, Joakim & Terasvirta, Timo, 1999. "Another Look at Swedish Business Cycles, 1861-1988," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(4), pages 359-378, July-Aug..
    8. Knüppel, Malte, 2014. "Can Capacity Constraints Explain Asymmetries Of The Business Cycle?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 65-92, January.
    9. Massenot, Baptiste & Pettinicchi, Yuri, 2019. "Can households see into the future? Survey evidence from the Netherlands," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 77-90.
    10. Monica Billio & Massimiliano Caporin & Guido Cazzavillan, 2008. "Dating EU15 monthly business cycle jointly using GDP and IPI," Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis, OECD Publishing, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys, vol. 2007(3), pages 333-366.
    11. Robert A Buckle & David Haugh & Peter Thomson, 2002. "Growth and volatility regime switching models for New Zealand GDP data," Treasury Working Paper Series 02/08, New Zealand Treasury.
    12. Daniel M. Chin & John Geweke & Preston J. Miller, 2000. "Predicting turning points," Staff Report 267, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    13. Föll, Tobias, 2017. "Financial Constraints, Wage Rigidity, and the Labor Market," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168080, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Tinsley, P A & Krieger, Reva, 1997. "Asymmetric Adjustments of Price and Output," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(3), pages 631-652, July.
    15. Yi Wen & Huabin Wu, 2011. "Dynamics of externalities: a second-order perspective," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 93(May), pages 187-206.
    16. Nicholas Bloom & Fatih Guvenen & Sergio Salgado, 2016. "Skewed Business Cycles," 2016 Meeting Papers 1621, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Dan Chin & John Geweke & Preston Miller, 2000. "Predicting Turning Points: Technical Paper 2000-3," Working Papers 13337, Congressional Budget Office.
    18. Martha Misas & María Teresa Ramírez, 2005. "Depressions In The Colombian Economic Growth During The Xx Century:A Markov Switching Regime Model," Borradores de Economia 2274, Banco de la Republica.
    19. Hess, Gregory D. & Iwata, Shigeru, 1997. "Asymmetric persistence in GDP? A deeper look at depth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 535-554, December.
    20. Marian Vavra, 2012. "A Note on the Finite Sample Properties of the CLS Method of TAR Models," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 1206, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:uersib:134682. 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/ersgvus.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.