Dr. Tansel Yilmazer, Human Sciences
Rank at time of award: Associate Professor
and
Dr. Lauren E. Jones, Human Sciences and John Glenn College of Public Affair
Rank at time of award: Associate Professor
and
Dr. Alex Hollingsworth, Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics
Rank at time of award: Associate Professor
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, federal and state governments expanded the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and created the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program to improve the nutritional health of economically imperiled families. No work has yet uncovered household responses in food spending to these COVID-19 pandemic expansions to nutrition assistance programs. Understanding such responses is vital for identifying the pathways by which expanded nutrition assistance programs affected nutritional health, and for designing safety net programs that are successful in improving long-term health equity.
The proposed study will use quasi-experimental techniques to examine the causal effects of pandemic expansions to SNAP and P-EBT programs on household spending on nutrient-dense foods. We will also investigate whether race moderates the causal pathways from the COVID-19 nutrition assistance programs to spending on nutrient-dense foods. To achieve these goals, we will use a unique secondary dataset, Nielsen Homescan Consumer Panel, which collects longitudinal purchase data from 60,000 households. Our target population is American households during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on SNAP-eligible and racially minoritized families. Our estimation strategies rely on the fact that i) SNAP benefits expanded for those just below an income threshold, but did not change for those just above this threshold, ii) P-EBT benefits became available to all families in communities where the share of children receiving reduced-price meals was above a cutoff, while PEBT benefits were not available for most families living in communities just below this cutoff, and iii) each state paid out SNAP and P-EBT funds to eligible families on different days and with different frequency.