The Effects of Reinstating ABAWD Work Requirements Following National Suspensions on SNAP Participation and Employment

• In Event: Precarious and Non-Traditional Hour Work Schedules: Examining the Working Conditions, Social Support, and Long-Term Trajectories

Abstract

SNAP is the largest nutrition assistance program in the United States, providing benefits to millions of participants each year. In 2022, about 9% of SNAP participants were classified as Able-Bodied Adults without Dependents (ABAWDs), who are typically subject to a time limit of 3 months of SNAP benefits in any 36 month period unless they meet additional work requirements. These work requirements reflect concerns that means-tested benefit receipt may disincentivize labor supply in the long term instead of serving as a temporary safety net, but previous literature suggests that their primary effect is to remove ABAWDs from SNAP participation. States may request to temporarily waive the time limit based on local economic conditions at the state, county, or local level. Importantly, historical waivers provide significant variation in the implementation of the ABAWD work requirements.

In this project, we aim to estimate the effects of ABAWD time limit reinstatement on program participation and employment outcomes following the national suspensions during the COVID-19 pandemic and Great Recession. We incorporate waiver information from every state using historical data on the county-month-level status of SNAP ABAWD waivers, defining counties as fully waived, partially waived, or not waived. We combine this with individual data from the American Community Survey (ACS) which includes information on location, employment status, age, disability, dependents, SNAP participation, and income. We employ a triple-differences approach to examine the impacts of reinstatement, exploiting differences in 1) time, 2) county ABAWD waiver reimplementation status, and 3) respondent characteristics indicating potential impact by the ABAWD work requirements. Because of the varying national economic situations following time limit reimplementation, we will compare estimates from the period before and after the Great Recession-era suspension (2009 to 2019) to those from the period before and after the COVID-19 pandemic suspension (2020 to 2024) to contribute to a fuller understanding of the ABAWD work requirements’ impact. The ACS data for the Great Recession reinstatement period is currently available, and we anticipate the data for 2023 and 2024 will be available soon.

This study will contribute to the growing body of literature on work requirements in safety net programs, adding evidence in particular on the impacts of work requirement reinstatement following the COVID-19 pandemic, when economic conditions differed from those following the Great Recession. Policymakers have recently enacted changes to the SNAP ABAWD work requirements and proposed additional changes, including changes to the criteria states can use to request waivers in ways that will likely apply these work requirements to more SNAP participants. This study will generate evidence on the major impacts of these requirements, and we accordingly expect our findings to be of interest to both researchers and policymakers concerned with work-related incentives in mean-tested programs and ABAWD-related policies.

Authors

• Kaitlyn Wilson
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Jordan W. Jones, USDA Economic Research Service
  Presenting Author