Essays on Food Insecurity and Food and Nutrition Assistance Policy in the United States

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2021This dissertation investigates many facets of means-testing in the United States through the lens of public food assistance. In Chapter 1, I speak to the literature on “administrative burden,” or individual-level barriers to means-tested program participation. Previous studies debate the extent to which administrative barriers inhibit take-up of means-tested programs. I study two application streamlining initiatives intended to simplify the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) application process in the United States through the reduction of transaction and information costs. The two initiatives differ along the dimension of in-person versus mail-based interactions with clients. Using two-way fixed effects and alternative difference-in-difference estimators, I estimate an overall 4.3 percentage point (19.3 percent) average treatment effect of application streamlining on SNAP participation. Further analysis of the two implementation models suggests a stronger effect of in-person interactions with clients (25.8 percent), compared to off-site outreach (15.2 percent). However, different approaches appear to be more effective for different eligible populations: there is suggestive evidence that off-site outreach could have a stronger effect for population subgroups experiencing mobility-related barriers to take-up. As such, this study points to the importance of understanding the behaviors and barriers to take-up experienced by specific target populations when designing initiatives intended to improve enrollment in means-tested programs. In Chapter 2, I speak to current discourse around the association between household food insecurity and disability status. Disability is a known risk factor for food insecurity, even when accounting for household income. However, the mechanisms driving the relationship between disability and food insecurity remain underexplored. Using the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey, I test the extent to which food store choice (representing food access) mediates the association between disability and food insecurity in the United States. The analysis is complicated by the notion that food insecurity also influences food store choice. Nevertheless, multivariate regression findings suggest that food access is not a significant driver of high rates of food insecurity among households where disabilities are present. This chapter has been accepted for publication in Physiology & Behavior (Charnes, forthcoming). In Chapter 3, I address questions surrounding the cause of the SNAP benefit cycle – a phenomenon in which SNAP benefits (disbursed on a monthly basis) are typically spent all at once within the first few days of receipt. The disbursement of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits is associated with a decline in food spending and caloric consumption over the SNAP month, resulting in a range of adverse consequences. However, there is a lack of consensus about the underlying cause of the SNAP benefit cycle. Building upon work conducted by Tiehen, Newman, and Kirlin (2017), I use the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey to examine SNAP households’ acquisitions of free food patterns across the SNAP month. I conclude that a steady state of free food acquisitions across the month is primarily attributable to benefit inadequacy. Although the three chapters are situated within distinct sets of literature, they jointly point to the importance of public food assistance for Americans in need. This dissertation was written during the Trump Presidency, which was characterized by movements to drastically cut the social safety net – followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, its associated recession, and movements to rebuild the safety net in the early years of the Biden Presidency. The three essays highlight the conditions that have led to current proposals to transition to a universal structure for SNAP and other safety net programs