Research

Senior participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has traditionally been lower than other groups, with historical estimates below 50 percent. We examine the relationship between state SNAP policy changes occurring over the 2001-2014 period and SNAP participation as well the relationship between SNAP participation and a variety of health-related outcomes for senior and non-senior households. Data from three separate sources, the 2001-2014 December Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS), the 2002-2014 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), and the 2001-2014 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), are used to conduct our analyses. We construct simulated eligibility variables (SEVs) and SNAP policy indices to capture differences in state SNAP generosity. In both our CPS-FSS and our HRS samples, we find that eligibility expansions lead to increases in non-senior SNAP participation with some evidence of smaller increases in senior participation. Overall, seniors and non-seniors appear to respond differently to various policies, but this difference is not consequential enough to explain the large participation disparity between the two groups. We also find that SNAP participation is associated with worse health-related outcomes for all samples in all three datasets, which is likely due to negative selection into program participation. The signs of these relationships reverse when we use our SEVs as instruments for SNAP participation. However, these coefficient estimates are not statistically significant and the strength of the SEV as an instrument for senior SNAP participation depends on the dataset and sample used, as well as whether or not we use sampling weights.

The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has proven to be the most effective anti-poverty program for working low-income families in the United States. Established in 1975 to offset payroll taxes and to provide a modest supplement to low wages, the EITC is now a $40 billion program serving over 20 million Americans. Over the past decade, 22 states and the District of Columbia have reformed their tax codes to include a state EITC to offset state income tax liability, provide an additional financial boost to low-income working families, and lift families out of poverty while also offering an incentive to work. In this policy brief we discuss some of the issues and options of a state EITC for Kentucky.

Does managed care produce lower health care utilization and costs through better aligned financial incentives and alternative delivery methods (the “pure” HMO effect) or by attracting more healthy enrollees (enrollee selection)? The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on this fundamental question using a quasi-experimental approach that exploits the timing and county specific implementation of Medicaid managed care plans in two distinct sub-sets of Kentucky counties in the late 1990s. We find large differences in the relative success of each region in reducing utilization that are likely driven by important differences in plan design. Asthmatic children enrolled in the plan that was successful at reducing utilization did not appear to suffer adverse health outcomes as a result. 

Between 2011 and 2016, coal mining employment declined by over 50 percent in Appalachia, resulting in large earnings and employment losses in coal-dependent communities. Whether these disruptions reflect temporary adjustment costs or signal more persistent decline depends in part on the extent and nature of various investment responses. This paper leverages differential Commuting Zone (CZ-) level exposure to coal’s decline to estimate its impact on government transfers and postsecondary training investments. Exposed CZs experienced significant increases in government transfer payments per capita. In contrast, coal’s decline produced no statistically detectable change in postsecondary degree completions, enrollment, or institutional finances. This null training response contrasts with documented effects in other settings. Given the importance of human capital in regional recovery from economic shocks, these findings suggest that distressed regions affected by the transition away from legacy energy sectors may struggle to adapt without more targeted support for postsecondary training.

We examined the association of Medicare eligibility with food security and food pantry visiting patterns among senior (aged ≥60 years) food pantry clients in Dallas, Texas. We used data from the pantry linked to electronic health records (EHR) from a safety-net healthcare system. Log-binomial regression was employed to calculate prevalence ratios of food insecurity by Medicare eligibility for all clients and separately for clients with various chronic conditions. We examined the impact of Medicare eligibility on food pantry visiting patterns among a non-disabled sample of clients using regression discontinuity. A member of each eligible household can visit once a month. Data from 604 households with 2,636 visits were analyzed for food security assessments. The majority were female (63%), average age was 68.5, many had less than a high school education (39%), and the majority were Black (60%) or Latino/a (29%). Of those with linked EHR data, 75% had at least one chronic condition. Medicare eligibility was associated with improved food security; this association was consistent among clients diagnosed with any chronic condition, but not among clients without any chronic condition. Additionally, we analyzed 119 households with 457 visits for the regression discontinuity analyses and observed that frequency of food pantry visits increased after becoming Medicare eligible. Overall, our findings highlight how Medicare eligibility may improve food security among seniors, potentially attributable to increased food pantry use after aging into Medicare. Future studies should examine underlying pathways of food pantry visiting patterns and their contributions to senior food security.

Policy makers are becoming increasingly concerned about the high percentage of students who attend postsecondary education without completing a degree. Researchers have studied numerous potential determinants of retention behavior for postsecondary students, such as financial aid, socioeconomic status, academic preparedness, academic and social integration, and expected future wages. However, none of these studies considers students’ earnings while in school as a potential determinant of retention. Using an administrative data from postsecondary institutions matched with administrative earnings data from the state’s unemployment insurance department, our results indicate that student earnings are negatively correlated to student retention in Kentucky postsecondary institutions. Our preferred model, hazard, indicates that a percentage increase in earnings reduces time to stopout with a probability of 1.767%. Even after controlling for student intentions, students are more likely to stopout at the rate of 1.050%. Ability as measured by first-term GPA in KCTCS and credits earned in the first semester positively affects retention.

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson went to Kentucky’s Martin County to declare war on poverty. The following year he signed the Appalachian Regional Development Act, creating a state-federal partnership to improve the region’s economic prospects through better job opportunities, greater human capital, and enhanced transportation. As the focal point of domestic antipoverty efforts, Appalachia took on special symbolic as well as economic importance. Nearly half a century later, what are the results? Appalachian Legacy provides the answers. Led by James P. Ziliak, prominent economists and demographers map out the region’s current status. They explore important questions such as: How has Appalachia fared since the signing of ARDA in 1965, and how does it now compare to the nation as a whole in key categories such as education, employment, and health. Was ARDA an effective place-based policy for ameliorating hardship in a troubled region, or is Appalachia still mired in a poverty trap? And what lessons can we draw from the Appalachian experience? In addition to providing important research to help analysts, policymakers, scholars, and regional experts discern what works in fighting poverty, Appalachian Legacy is an important contribution to the economic history of the eastern United States. (Published at Brookings Institution Press, 2012)

In 2005, Florida implemented an internet-based service delivery system for eligibility determination in public assistance programs, including the Food Stamp, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the Medicaid programs. At the same time, Florida switched from a caseworker model to a technology-driven model and decreased staffing levels of employees involved in social service delivery. We conduct an evaluative case study of the effects of these policy changes on the Food Stamp caseload. In particular, we consider the impact on applications and the flows onto and off of the program. To answer these questions, we use administrative data from the Florida Department of Children and Families for the period from 2003 to 2008 to understand the policy impacts on caseload dynamics. Results suggest that modernization may have resulted in decreases in application and inflows to the Food Stamp Program but with important differences for specific demographic groups. Simulations suggest that the strongest negative effects of modernization were observed among the elderly and African Americans. High earners, while still negatively affected by the staffing reductions, were observed to have gained modestly from modernization.

Recent studies have used a distributional analysis of welfare reform experiments suggesting that some individuals reduce hours in order to opt into welfare, an example of behavioral-induced participation. Using data on Connecticut’s Jobs First experiment, we find no evidence of behavioral-induced participation at the highest conditional quantiles of earnings. We offer a simple explanation for this: women assigned to Jobs First incur welfare participation costs to labor supply at higher earnings where the control group is welfare ineligible. Moreover, as expected, behavioral components and costs of program participation do not seem to play a differential role at other conditional quantiles where both groups are eligible to participate. Our findings show that a welfare program imposes an estimated cost up to 10 percent of quarterly earnings, and these costs can be heterogeneous throughout the conditional earnings distribution. The evidence is obtained by employing a semi-parametric panel quantile estimator for a model that allows women to vary arbitrarily in preferences and costs of participating in welfare programs.

Previous research has shown that investments during the early childhood period are likely to have the highest social return. We use administrative data from Virginia to document participation in SNAP and TANF among children born between 2007- 2010 during their early childhood period, which we define here as birth to age six. We find that participation in SNAP is about four times greater than participation in TANF and that most children begin their connection with the social welfare system in their birth year. Children who participate earlier in life tend to stay connected over a longer portion of the early childhood period, although SNAP participation peaks around ages 3-4 while TANF peaks earlier, around ages 2-3. In terms of joint participation, most households on SNAP do not receive TANF and about 1 in 12 children on TANF do not receive SNAP. Finally, over the early childhood period, on average, just under 1 in 2 children in Virginia participated in SNAP or TANF but demography plays an important role in this process: The level of cumulative receipt is 1 in 4 among White children, 1 in 2 among Hispanic children but rises to 3 in 4 for Black children; cumulative receipt is also higher in nonmetropolitan counties than metropolitan counties. This study documents the reach of the existing social welfare system during the early childhood period, underlining the importance of race and space in 21st century America.

This study examined changes in senior Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation and household food and non-food expenditures following the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) expansion in SNAP benefits and the 2013 sunset of the benefit expansion. Using data from the 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 Food Security Supplements of the Current Population Survey, we find that senior SNAP participation increased significantly from 2008, prior to the implementation of the ARRA to 2010 post-ARRA, with the largest change among the oldest seniors aged 80 years and older. Seniors using meal services like home-delivered meals or congregate meals at senior centers saw larger increases in SNAP participation than those who did not use these services. There were no significant changes in senior SNAP participation following the 2013 sunset of the ARRA benefit expansion. Expenditure data from the 2007-11 and 2012-14 Consumer Expenditure Surveys shows that, in contrast to younger adults, seniors did not appear to significantly alter their food expenditures in response to changes in SNAP benefits. Among non-food categories, the 2009 increase in benefits resulted in a significant increase of $164 in transportation spending among seniors but also a decrease of $87 in their spending on utilities. Unlike younger age groups, the benefit changes did not shift seniors’ Engel curve for food-at-home spending suggesting that, on average, SNAP benefits are equivalent to cash income for seniors. Overall, our results verify that SNAP has spillover effects on transportation, utilities, healthcare and other spending among eligible adults, well beyond its stated goal of supporting food spending.

We examine characteristics and correlates of households in the United States that are most likely to have children at risk of inadequate nutrition – those that report very low food security (VLFS) among their children. Using 11 years of the Current Population Survey, plus data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and American Time Use Survey, we describe these households in great detail with the goal of trying to understand how these households differ from households without such severe food insecurity. While household income certainly plays an important role in determining VLFS among children, we find that even after flexibly controlling for income-to-poverty rates some household characteristics and patterns of program participation have important additional explanatory power. Finally, our examination of the NHANES and ATUS data suggests an important role for both mental and physical health in determining the food security status of children.

English Learners, students who are not proficient in English and speak a non-English language at home, make up more than 10 percent of the nation’s K-12 student body. Achieving proficiency in English for these students is a major goal of both state and federal education policy, motivating the provision of bilingual education policies. Using data for nearly 500,000 English Learners from California, I show that students in bilingual education have substantially lower English proficiency than other English Learners in first and second grades. In contrast, there is little difference between bilingual education and other programs for students in grades three through five. These results hold across fixed effects, propensity score, and instrumental variables models.

Monthly welfare programs such as the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) produce consistent cycles of expenditure and consumption amongst recipients. Food insecurity and negative behavioral outcomes track these cycles. This paper leverages new data from the USDA, the FoodAPS survey, and to answer a variety of questions related to these phenomena: Are consumption and expenditure cycles correlated? Who bears the burden of food shortages at the end of each benefit month? Does diet quality track food expenditure? I find robust expenditure and consumption cycles in the FoodAPS data, but contrary to popular belief, they are only weakly correlated. The youngest children are spared from cyclical food shortages, but school-aged children experience them when they are out of school. Universal participation of the sample in school meal programs while in school (and the complete lack of participation in summer meal programs) suggests that these programs may mitigate a great deal of children’s food insecurity. Diet quality declines over the course of the month, compounding the impact of fewer meals on health. Food access issues cannot explain the identified cycles. We interpret these findings as evidence consistent with a consumption-driven calorie crunch in which the expenditure cycle is a response to the previous month’s consumption deprivation.

We document the demographic and economic forces underlying changes in income inequality among single mother families over the past three decades in the United States. Using decomposable measures of after-tax income-to-needs inequality, we examine within- and between-group inequality based on education attainment, age, past marital status, race, and employment status. We also conduct income factor decompositions to quantify the relative contributions of earnings, transfers, other income, and taxes to inequality. Our results from the March Current Population Survey show that income-to-needs inequality rose nearly 30 percent between 1979 and 2005. The demographic decompositions indicate that most of the change in inequality is occurring within groups, in part because of large, offsetting between-group changes in population shares and relative mean incomes. The most prominent economic factor underlying the rise in income inequality among single mother families is labor-market earnings, the latter of which was induced by rising variance of hourly wages.

SNAP eligibility and participation rates have been increasing for adults 50 years and older since 2008. At the same time, SNAP participation continues to fall over the life course, with the lowest rates concentrated among individuals 85 years and above. We use longitudinal data from the nationally representative Health and Retirement Survey from 2002 to 2016 to document how SNAP eligibility, participation, and take-up changed over time for older adults. Then, we investigate the role that out-of-pocket medical expenses have played in these changing patterns.  We rely upon the state adoption of the Medicaid Expansion in 2014 as a source of exogenous variation. 

The purpose of this report is to provide a selective survey of the literature on the economic consequences of child care for recipient families, and to relate the results to families residing in Kentucky using data from the Annual Social and Economic Study in the Current Population Survey. The survey is selective both because of its exclusive focus on child care research by economists and because the literature is vast even within economics such that only articles deemed to be important contributions to the labor supply and child care literature are included. There are extensive literatures on child care in the fields of social work and sociology, but in a bid to narrow the focus on the types of questions and methodologies employed this survey excludes this research.

In 2007, about 3.3 million households in the U.S. (8.3 percent of households with children) had fchildren who lacked consistent access to an adequate food supply, implying less than complete coverage of children by the food-assistance safety net. We use the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (PSID) to estimate the effect of food stamp participation on child food security. Our results indicate that food stamps play an important role in protecting the well-being of needy children by improving food security among children in low-income households who are faced with economic shocks.

Exposure to stressful life experiences during childhood, such as food insecurity, can have negative consequences for attainment later in life. The developmental timing of stressful events and how they influence outcomes over the life course is a critical area of research. Indeed, a more comprehensive understanding of the latter life consequences of childhood food insecurity could guide policy-makers in designing more effective social policies to reduce the severity of the poor life outcomes. This project uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the young adult impacts (as late as age 25) of food insecurity experienced in discrete childhood stages – middle childhood (ages 5-10), early adolescence (ages 11-14), and middle adolescence (ages 15-18). It aims to identify which childhood stage-specific effects of food insecurity are most important to five young adult outcomes in two main areas – risky sexual behaviors and criminal justice involvement. Results provide consistent evidence that the mean food security scores in middle childhood are associated with the criminal justice involvement outcome. The results are less consistent with the sexual risk taking outcomes. Middle childhood food insecurity is associated with the number of sexual partners in young adulthood, while early adolescent food insecurity is associated with the number of children in young adulthood. Results indicate that male respondents appear to be more sensitive to food insecurity than females.