The Decline, Rebound, and Further Rise in SNAP Enrollment: Disentangling Business Cycle Fluctuations and Policy Changes

By P. Ganong, Jeffrey B. Liebman. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2013

186 citations recorded by the source corpus.

One-in-seven Americans received benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 2011, an all-time high. We analyze changes in program enrollment over the past two decades, quantifying the contributions of unemployment and state policy changes. Using instrumental variables to address measurement error, we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in unemployment raises enrollment by 15 percent. Unemployment explains most of the decrease in enrollment in the late 1990s, state policy changes explain more of the increase in enrollment in the early 2000s, and unemployment explains most of the increase in enrollment in the aftermath of the Great Recession. (JEL E24, E32, H53, H75, I12, I18, I58)

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a72b0230fcb342b3cd03b8246092078c2c21cab0

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

1. Nathaniel Hendren
2. M. Bitler
3. H. Hoynes
4. Wei Huang

Citations in the corpus

• The Policy Elasticity (2016, background): “Indeed, 1 in 4 children received benefits in July 2011 (Ganong and Liebman (2013)).”
• The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same? The Safety Net and Poverty in the Great Recession (2016, background): “20 When examining the earlier period, especially the Bush expansions in the early 2000s, Ganong and Liebman ð2013Þ find more of a role for policy changes in explaining the growth of Food Stamps caseloads.”