The Impact of In-kind Food 

Benefit Increase on 

Consumption: Evidence from 

the SNAP

YITING LAN

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
Introduction

· SNAP: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, was Food Stamp Program, the largest 

program in the U.S. that provides nutrition assistance to low-income and no-income families

· ARRA: The American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Act of 2009 increased benefit levels for the SNAP

and expanded SNAP eligibility.

Does ARRA’s SNAP enhancements improve the low

income household diet?

Food at home, vegetable, fruit

My model show limited evidence that the increase 

of SNAP benefits improve SNAP participants’ food 

consumption behavior.
Data

· Consumer Expenditure Survey (Diary) 2007-2011 (70770 records)

· Diary Survey is designed to collect data on small, frequently purchased items, including most food 

and clothing. 

· Dependent variables: food at home (FOODHOME), fresh vegetables (FRSHVEG), fresh fruits 

(FRSHFRUT) , processed vegetables(PROCFRUT), processed fruits(PROCFRUT)

· Independent variables: if any members of THE CU received any Food Stamps in the past month 

(FD_STMPS), if any members of THE CU received any Food Stamps in the past 12 month (REC_FS),

Dollar value of the last food stamps or EBT received (mean of imputation iterations) (FS_AMTXM)

· Demographic variables: gender, age, race, family size, education level, income, etc.
Cleaning Data

1. How to distinguish SNAP participates and non-participates?

if any members of THE CU received any Food Stamps in the past month (FD_STMPS)

if any members of THE CU received any Food Stamps in the past 12 month (REC_FS)

Dollar value of the last food stamps or EBT received (mean of imputation iterations)(FS_AMTXM)

Constant answers towards two questions and provide valid benefits value.

Useful tips: Data flags
Cleaning Data

2. One week records & two weeks records

To keep as more as possible samples, average two weeks’ consumption.

3. Difficulty in choosing income variable

Family income before taxes, mean of imputation iterations. FINCBEFM = mean(FINCBEF1-FINCBEF5):

FINCBEFM and FINCBEF1-FINCBEF5

The sum of the amount of wage/salary income before deductions for all household members 

FWAGEX = sum of (WAGEX + WAGEBX) for all the household members: FWAGEX

one week 

record=one 

week family

two weeks 

record=2*two 

weeks family total records two week family total family

2007 707 13040 13747 6520 7227

2008 693 13486 14179 6743 7436

2009 741 13882 14623 6941 7682

2010 618 13678 14296 6839 7457

2011 623 13302 13925 6651 7274

sum records 3382 67388 70770 33694 37076
Hypothesis

Hypothesis1. The SNAP households will increase their expenditure for food at home when their 

SNAP benefits increase, and it is represented by the increase of food at home.

Hypothesis2. The SNAP households will increase the amounts of healthy foods purchased in the 

home when their SNAP benefits increase, and it is represented by the increase of fresh 

vegetables at home.

Hypothesis3. The SNAP households will increase the amounts of healthy foods purchased in the 

home when their SNAP benefits increase, and it is represented by the increase of fresh fruits at 

home.
Method

The i is for individual, the j is for the outcome variable of the expenditure for food at home, fresh 

vegetables available at home and fresh fruits available at home. The After is a dummy variable 

for data period. The SNAP is a dummy variable indicating whether the households are SNAP 

participants, it equals to 0 if the household did not receive SNAP benefits in the last month and 

they did not report an amount of SNAP benefits. And it equals to 1 if the households did receive 

SNAP benefits in the last month and they did report an amount of SNAP benefits. The variable 

After*SNAP is the interaction term to test whether the increase of benefits has an impact on the 

amount of food purchased. XXii is a matrix of the household demographic fixed effect, and εiiii is 

the error.
Summary statistics

In general, the fresh vegetables, fresh fruits and sweets consumption for SNAP nonparticipants are all 

higher than SNAP participants. Demographics also differ between two groups, SNAP participants are 

more likely to be black, and headed by younger, female, and tend to have larger family size.
Difference-in-Difference
Difference-in-Difference

In average SNAP participants consume about 

$3.916 fresh fruits less, $3.258 fresh 

vegetables less and $33.819 food at home less, 

compared with nonparticipants when 

controlling for other variables. In general, the 

model explained about 5.9% of the variance of 

fresh fruits consumption, 6.0% of the variance 

of fresh vegetables consumption and 16.47% 

of the food at home consumption. However, 

there is no evidence showing that SNAP 

participants change their fresh fruit, vegetables 

and sweets consumption in response to 

increases in SNAP benefits. 
Discussion about data

1. “zero” consumption
Discussion about data

1. “zero” consumption
Discussion about data

1. “zero” consumption
Discussion about data

2. sample

CEX interview vs. diary: In Beatty and Tuttle’s paper (interview): (1) households that were 

participants in the program before and after the policy changes, and (2) households that were 

never participants in the program. 
Discussion about data

3. SNAP participation rate----lower than other data

AFTER 

CLEANING TERM SNAP NONSNAP SUM PERCENTAGE

2007 1 79 1599 1678 0.047079857

2 74 1617 1691 0.043761088

3 100 1598 1698 0.058892815

4 94 1647 1741 0.053991959

2008 1 89 1669 1758 0.050625711

2 88 1707 1795 0.04902507

3 101 1637 1738 0.058112773

4 114 1634 1748 0.065217391

2009 1 116 1666 1782 0.065095398

2 146 1662 1808 0.080752212

3 143 1654 1797 0.079577073

4 144 1687 1831 0.078645549

2010 1 126 1709 1835 0.06866485

2 149 1619 1768 0.084276018

3 151 1560 1711 0.088252484

4 164 1534 1698 0.096584217

2011 1 161 1559 1720 0.093604651

2 166 1536 1702 0.097532315

3 148 1550 1698 0.087161366

4 171 1507 1678 0.101907032
Discussion about data

quarter1 quarter2 quarter3 quarter4

2007 262.636 223.949 214.732 284.817

2008 227.416 228.885 218.889 273.799

2009 257.203 289.692 276.207 284.934

2010 313.016 276.262 301.582 302.03

2011 306.641 292.146 291.096 317.675

AFTER 

CLEANING per household

quarter1 quarter2 quarter3 quarter4

2007 263.2 230.45 216.64 244.47

2008 232.28 227.34 213.44 278.02

2009 257.73 295.59 279.8 292.76

2010 320.97 282.65 307.25 312.43

2011 314.55 300.51 287.02 322.03

4. average SNAP benefits value: not very consistent with policy trends
Next Step & Suggestions?
Thank you!