scholarly journals Program Recertification Costs: Evidence from SNAP

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-298
Author(s):  
Tatiana Homonoff ◽  
Jason Somerville

Participants in means-tested programs must periodically document eligibility through a recertification process. If all cases that fail recertification are ineligible, the exact timing of this process should be irrelevant. We find that later recertification interview assignments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which leave less time to reschedule missed interviews, decrease recertification success by 22 percent. The consequences of not recertifying due to later interviews are highly skewed: most cases quickly reenroll, while one-quarter remain off SNAP for over a year. The marginal disenrolled case is as needy as the average participant, suggesting inefficient screening from late interviews. (JEL H51, H75, I12, I18, I38)

Author(s):  
Jun Zhang ◽  
Yanghao Wang ◽  
Steven T. Yen

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is designed to improve household diet and food security—a pressing problem confronting low-income families in the United States. Previous studies on the issue often ignored the methodological issue of endogenous program participation. We revisit this important issue by estimating a simultaneous equation system with ordinal household food insecurity. Data are drawn from the 2009–2011 Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS), restricted to SNAP-eligible households with children. Our results add to the stocks of empirical findings that SNAP participation ameliorates food insecurity among adults only, but increases the probabilities of low and very low food security among children. These contradictory results indicate that our selection approach with a single cross section is only partially successful, and that additional efforts are needed in further analyses of this complicated issue, perhaps with longitudinal data. Socio-demographic variables are found to affect food-secure households and food-insecure households differently, but affect SNAP nonparticipants and participants in the same direction. The state policy tools, such as broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE) and simplified reporting, can encourage SNAP participation and thus ameliorate food insecurity. Our findings can inform policy deliberations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 488-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darcy A. Freedman ◽  
Eunlye Lee ◽  
Punam Ohri-Vachaspati ◽  
Erika Trapl ◽  
Elaine Borawski ◽  
...  

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