The Effect of the Termination of the SNAP Emergency Allotments on Material and Economic Wellbeing

• In Event: Strengthening Public Benefits to Support Family Financial Resilience

Abstract

In March 2020, shortly after the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which included several provisions to expand assistance to struggling individuals, including the authorization of Emergency Allotments (EA) to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The EA payments authorized states to provide the maximum SNAP benefit (by household size) to all participants, regardless of the household’s income or work status, essentially making it easier to both apply for SNAP (reducing verification requirements) and making the policy more generous. When the EA was first implemented in April 2020, all states were enrolled. However, by the spring/summer of 2021, some states decided not to re-apply for the EA benefits, terminating the additional benefits in those states. Eighteen states opted to end EA benefits before the program was officially ended nationwide in March 2023. In this paper, we exploit the variation in the dissolution of the EA benefits (over time and at the end of the program) to examine the impacts of the end of this policy on families’ material and economic wellbeing (material hardships, financial security and reliance on private safety nets).

 We build on prior research that focused on the Census Household Pulse Survey by using a unique dataset of individuals who were currently receiving, or recently received, SNAP. Our data are a national, repeated cross-sectional dataset with more than 45,000 low-income respondents (Providers survey). These unique data allow us to examine the effect of the EA policy change on the individuals who were most affected by the policy change. We consider the effects of the expiration of the EA on a broad array of material hardship measures: food insecurity, housing, medical, bill, and transportation hardships, and access to basic household items. We also consider measures of hardship avoidance: the use of food pantries, and on reliance on friends and family for food, as well as money families had on hand, how long that money would last, and whether they borrowed from friends/family to make ends meet.

We find that the EA expiration increased overall levels of material hardship, food insecurity and the share of respondents reporting that they were missing needed household items. However, we found little evidence that the end of the EA affected any other hardship (housing, medical, transportation or utility). We also find that the expiration of the EA increased the likelihood of relying on friends and family for food, but not food pantry use. Our findings are robust to several alternative specifications, sample restrictions, and placebo tests. Results using the Callaway-Sant’Anna method, show that our findings are robust, although some findings are less statistically significant. We find some suggestive evidence of bigger negative effects on White households and households with income (as compared to no income), as a result of the end of the EA. Overall, our findings suggest this COVID-19 era policy likely to helped families make ends meet and the end of the policy increased

Authors

• Natasha Pilkauskas, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Katherine Michelmore, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Co-Author