Poster #127 - The Role of State Social Safety Net Generosity on Food Insecurity among Households with Children

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Abstract

Over the past several decades, food security has become a widely used social indicator of family well-being in the United States. In 2023, 13.5 percent of all U.S. households and 17.9 percent of households with children were food insecure at some time during the year, with substantial variation across states, ranging from 7.4 percent in New Hampshire to 18.9 percent in Arkansas (Rabbitt et al., 2024). While food insecurity arises from insufficient resources at the household level, there are a host of factors in a broader context where households reside that contribute to and influence household resources and, thereby, food insecurity.

One important contextual factor that influences household food security status is the social safety net, which acts as a crucial buffer against the negative impacts of economic instability and limited resources, particularly for economically disadvantaged households. The “safety net” is a patchwork of cash and in-kind benefits purposed to protect individuals and families from poverty and hardship. A unique characteristic of the U.S. safety net is a long history of federalism that decentralized rulemaking, administration, and, to some extent, funding of safety net programs. Because of this devolution in policy designs and implementation, substantial geographic differences exist in social provision across states (Bruch et al., 2018).      

The current study examines how the generosity of the state social safety net is associated with food insecurity among households with children. Paying attention to considerable inequality in social provision and differences in the prevalence of food insecurity across regions, it posits that the policy environment in which a household resides has a potential impact on household wellbeing and food security status. Building on earlier work (Bartfeld & Dunifon, 2006; Bartfeld & Men, 2017) that examined the role of state contextual factors on household food insecurity, I focus on a more recent period, the years immediately preceding COVID-19, and explore composite measures of safety net generosity across programs.

This study utilizes years 2010 to 2019 of the Current Population Survey-Food Security Supplement for household-level data, merged with state-level policy variables from various sources. It focuses on four major cash and nutrition assistance programs - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and Unemployment Insurance (UI) - that have some level of state discretion over benefit levels and eligibility. For the analysis, a state and year fixed effects logit model is used, controlling for unobserved state-year differences.

Preliminary results highlight the importance of SNAP and UI generosity, which is linked to lower food insecurity. In ongoing work, I am incorporating a richer set of measures to capture the generosity of state programs. Findings provide new insight into the importance of state policy environments in reducing food insecurity risk. Additionally, understanding the role of SNAP and UI leading up to the pandemic offers valuable context for studying their role during the pandemic, when they were both temporarily expanded in unconventional ways. 

Author

• Jungjin Koo, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author