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

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 153-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Ganong ◽  
Jeffrey B. Liebman

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)

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 952-952
Author(s):  
Lauren Popham ◽  
Jane Tavares ◽  
Marc Cohen

Abstract Despite the start of COVID-19 pandemic recovery in the U.S., food insecurity remains at elevated levels with 10% of American adults reporting food insecurity nearly three times higher than pre-pandemic (Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, June 2021). To gain insight into the long-term impacts of the pandemic on older adults, we examined food insecurity patterns during the last economic recession and the role that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) played in mitigating food insecurity and skipped meals. We analyzed data on adults age 60+ from the Health and Retirement Study, looking at the Great Recession (2008) as a predictor of what to expect in the next decade of pandemic recovery. A key finding was that food insecurity more than doubled among older adults during the Great Recession and remained elevated even 10 years later. Regression analyses showed that SNAP use among older adults weakened the relationship between poverty and food insecurity, but didn’t eliminate it—17% of older adults still reported food insecurity two years after enrolling in SNAP. The data indicates that a growing share of older SNAP users’ benefits have not kept up with rising food costs. In fact, 85% of beneficiaries had monthly benefit amounts below the USDA ‘Thrifty Plan” budget. Congress recently passed the American Rescue Plan which increases SNAP benefits temporarily, yet these enhancements are about to run out. This study underscores the need for permanent SNAP enhancements to help prevent long-lasting hunger facing millions of older Americans.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 416-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa J. Pino

AbstractThe former Deputy Administrator of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP) nutrition assistance program summarizes her experiences as the lead policy official for the program during the Great Recession under President Obama, specifying observations on how immigration impacts SNAP access for SNAP-eligible clients.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicoletta Balbo ◽  
Piergiorgio Carapella ◽  
Veronica Toffolutti

Despite the growing evidence of health-responses to macroeconomic fluctuations, little research has been carried out on the economic reflexes of licit and illicit drug-consumption, especially among teenagers. This paper uses data on adolescents between 15 and 17 years old from 25 European countries to test, if and how the substance-use pattern has changed during the Great Recession. The data come from two cross-sectional waves (2007 and 2011) of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) (n= 137,989 individuals). One percentage point increase in the unemployment rate is associated with an increase [decrease] in the probability of having tried inhalants and cocaine [ecstasy] at least once, by about 0.005 (95% CI: 0.004, 0.006) and 0.001 (95% CI: 0.0001, 0.001) [-0.001 (95% CI: -0.001, -0.001)] respectively. Social protection expenditure reduces the use of inhalants, whereas ecstasy consumption rises. The pattern for cocaine is unclear.


2019 ◽  
Vol 109 (4) ◽  
pp. 1164-1172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Hamad ◽  
Zachary S Templeton ◽  
Lena Schoemaker ◽  
Michelle Zhao ◽  
Jay Bhattacharya

ABSTRACT Background The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) expanded significantly after the Great Recession of 2008–2009, but no studies have characterized this new group of recipients. Few data sets provide details on whether an individual is a new or established recipient of SNAP. Objective We sought to identify new and existing SNAP recipients, and to examine differences in sociodemographic characteristics, health, nutritional status, and food purchasing behavior between new and existing recipients of SNAP after the recession. Methods We created a probabilistic algorithm to identify new and existing SNAP recipients using the 1999–2013 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We applied this algorithm to the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS), fielded during 2012–2013, to predict which individuals were likely to be new SNAP recipients. We then compared health and nutrition characteristics between new, existing, and never recipients of SNAP in FoodAPS. Results New adult SNAP recipients had higher socioeconomic status, better self-reported health, and greater food security relative to existing recipients, and were more likely to smoke relative to never recipients. New child SNAP recipients were less likely to eat all meals and had lower BMI relative to existing recipients. New SNAP households exhibited differences in food access and expenditures, although dietary quality was similar to that of existing SNAP households. Conclusion We developed a novel algorithm for predicting new and existing SNAP recipiency that can be applied to other data sets, and subsequently demonstrated differences in health characteristics between new and existing recipients. The expansion of SNAP since the Great Recession enrolled a population that differed from the existing SNAP population and that may benefit from different types of nutritional and health services than those traditionally offered.


Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael

Chapter 11 assesses the growth prospects of the world economy. The history of global economic doomsaying is traced briefly, a frequently reasonable position that has not done well with the facts for the past hundred years. Capitalism has been adept at escaping from the pit and pendulum. A set of global imbalances is then reviewed that are seen as posing a severe threat to global economic stability and certainly to the prospects for sustainable and equitable growth. The Great Recession following the Crash of 2007–8 might be “different this time.” Historical and contemporary fears of “secular stagnation” are discussed but the speculative nature of stagnationist assessments is acknowledged.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Tobias Arnold ◽  
Sean Mueller ◽  
Adrian Vatter

Abstract Over the past decades, decentralization has become the new paradigm in how states should organize power territorially. Carefully planned institutional re-designs are the most visible expression thereof. Yet the Great Recession of 2007–2009 has pushed governments into the opposite direction, i.e., towards centralization, to better weather the fiscal drought. Given these contradictory developments, this article compares the effects of twenty-three separate state reforms with the impact of the Great Recession on fiscal centralization in twenty-nine countries over more than two decades. In the main, our analyses attribute a larger effect to design, i.e., pro-active policy making through reforms, than reactive crisis management after a great shock. However, this difference is only apparent once we consider a state’s institutional structure, that is whether a political system is unitary or federal. Our findings thus highlight the need for a multidimensional approach to better understand the drivers of fiscal de/centralization.


2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (01) ◽  
pp. 19-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Charles Merrill

The Great Financial Crisis that broke in 2008 and the Great Recession that followed has led many to question the very structure of contemporary economies. Some argue that the economic model of the past forty years is now broken. Criticism has also been directed at the orthodoxies of economics. For example, neoclassical equilibrium economics, the mainstream economics of the day, is accused of failing to understand some of the most basic aspects of the modern economy (debt and money), of supporting policies that have led to the economic breakdown (deregulation), and of failing to see the crisis coming (Bezemer 2012, Keen 2011). Consequently, heterodox thinking in economics is getting a hearing as never before. Heterodox economics offers itself as the requisite radical reconstruction of the science of economics and also proposes policies for the radical reconstruction of the major economics.Yet to talk of the reconstruction of the modern market economy is at the same time to raise the ethical question: what shape ought the market economy to take? Heterodox economics may acutely analyse the inadequacies of real economies and propose plausible reforms, but as an essentially descriptive science there will be limits on its ability to state what ought to be. Rather, what is required seems to be a systematic prescriptive ethics. In other words, recent events in the world of economics have provided an opening for what ethical philosophy should be best at providing. Determining whether a specific ethical philosophy, to be identified shortly, has the capacity to address the questions raised by heterodox economics is the task of this paper.


2015 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Lazaretou

AbstractThe past Greek crisis experience is more or less terra incognita. In all historical empirical studies Greece is systematically neglected or included only sporadically in their cross-country samples. In the national literature too there is little on this topic. In this paper we use the 1930s crisis as a useful testing ground to compare the two crises episodes, ‘then’ and ‘now’; to detect differences and similarities and discuss the policy facts with the ultimate aim to draw some ‘policy lessons’ from history. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to study the Greek crisis experience across the two historical episodes. Comparisons with the interwar period show that the recent economic downturn was faster, larger and more severe than during the early 1930s. More importantly, analysing the determinants of the two crises, we conclude that Greece’s problems arose from its inability to credibly adhere to a nominal anchor.


2014 ◽  
Vol 104 (5) ◽  
pp. 61-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. Taylor

This paper reports on recent research showing that the severe recession of 2007-2009 and the weak recovery have been due to poor economic policies and the failure to implement good policies during the past decade. Monetary policy, fiscal policy, and regulatory policy became more discretionary, more interventionist, and less predictable in comparison with the previous two decades of better economic performance. At best these policies led to growth spurts, but were followed by retrenchments, averaging to poor performance. The paper also considers alternative views-that the equilibrium interest rate declined during the decade and that the seriousness of financial crisis caused the slow recovery.


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