Social Safety Net
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (EST)
- Chair: Brendan Cushing-Daniels, Gettysburg College
From Storefronts to Screens: The Impacts of Online Grocery Shopping on Public Food Assistance Users
Abstract
Many anti-poverty programs are in-kind, and adoption of new technology can alleviate the challenges associated with redeeming benefits. This project investigates how the availability of online grocery purchasing in public food assistance programs—including SNAP—affects food access, benefit spending patterns, and program participation. Authorization to accept Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) payments online was disproportionately adopted by large food retailers in urban areas. Exploiting the staggered roll-out of online purchasing authorization across retailers, I estimate that online exposure led to a $16 increase in monthly online EBT spending per household. Households substitute away from in-store spending at large food retailers. Following a large drop in SNAP benefits, participants decrease online grocery spending more than dollar-for-dollar, suggesting that EBT consumers are willing to pay for convenience under higher incomes. Finally, online grocery purchasing availability increases local SNAP participation by 4 percent, primarily by increasing retention of existing participants. These results suggest that policies which reduce benefit redemption frictions can improve the effectiveness of in-kind benefit programs.The Anatomy and Evolution of Survey Error: Methods
Abstract
Survey data increasingly miss dollars for major income sources (Meyer et al. 2015), threatening their reliability as a foundation for research and policy. Previous studies have gone beyond comparisons of aggregates to document measurement error at the individual level, tending to focus on single income sources like retirement income (Bee and Rothbaum 2017) or SNAP (Meyer et al. 2022) over a limited set of states and/or years. We provide a comprehensive assessment of how individual-level measurement error has changed over time, using data for ten income sources spanning more than two decades. We present motivating facts documenting the deterioration of survey quality, including worsening underreporting of both dollars and recipients alongside rising unit non-response, whole imputation, and item imputation rates. We then link the Current Population Survey Annual Social Economic Supplement (CPS) from 1996 and 2017 to administrative records for retirement income (IRS), Social Security (SSA), Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (SSA), Disability Insurance (SSA), Supplemental Security Income (SSA), Unemployment Insurance (IRS), veterans' disability compensation (DVA), SNAP (state agencies), public and subsidized housing (HUD), and Medicaid (CMS). Finally, we describe our approach to decomposing total survey error (in terms of dollars and recipients) into various components for each income source and year.The Anatomy and Evolution of Survey Error: Estimates
Abstract
We document how individual-level measurement error has evolved across ten income sources from 1996 to 2017, using data from the CPS linked to various administrative records. For each income source and year, we quantify four key components of survey error (coverage error, whole imputation error, item non-response error, and measurement error among respondents) and show these components can further be decomposed into false negatives (recipients not reporting receipt), false positives (non-recipients erroneously reporting receipt), and dollar misreporting among true reporting recipients. We show the contribution of each component to total survey error in dollars and recipients, both in net and absolute terms. These estimates have major implications for assessing how income-based measures of poverty, inequality, and program effectiveness are biased at a point in time and have changed over time. They will also form the basis for imputation models to correct for misreporting in survey data, which we plan to share with the research community.The Long-Term Effects of Universal Free School Meal Policies: Evidence from the Community Eligibility Provision
Abstract
School meal policies in the United States are at a crossroads: half of public K–12 schools provide universal free meals to all students, regardless of income, while the other half offer free and reduced-price (FRP) meals based on income eligibility. Do universal policies improve student outcomes compared to targeted policies for low-income children? I evaluate the short- and long-term effects of universal free school meal policies using linked administrative data from Texas. I exploit the staggered rollout of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a federal policy that allows high-poverty schools to offer meals free to all students. I find that CEP increases meal take-up by 6.2 percentage points, or 20 additional meals per student per year (a 10 percent increase). Higher-income students previously ineligible for FRP are more responsive to CEP than low-income students already eligible under FRP. Despite the increase in take-up, I detect no improvements in academic, behavioral, or economic outcomes, either overall or across subgroups, in the short or long run. Applying the marginal value of public funds framework, I show that the costs of CEP exceed its benefits, suggesting limited efficiency gains from universal provision relative to targeted support.Attention vs Choice in Welfare Take-up: What Works for WIC?
Abstract
Incomplete take-up of welfare benefits remains a major policy puzzle. This paper decomposes the causes of incomplete welfare take-up into two mechanisms: inattention, where households do not consider program participation, and active choice, where households consider participation but find it not worthwhile. To capture these two mechanisms, we model households' take-up decision as a two-stage process: attention followed by choice. Applied to NLSY97 data on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), our model reveals substantial household-level heterogeneity in both attention and choice probabilities. Furthermore, counterfactual simulations predict that choice-nudging policies outperform attention-boosting policies. We test this prediction using data from the WIC2Five pilot program that sent choice-nudging and attention-boosting text messages to different households. Consistent with the counterfactual prediction, choice-nudging messages increased retention much more effectively than attention-boosting messages.JEL Classifications
- H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies