SNAP Participation and Diet Outcomes. Feature: Food & Nutrition Assistance. Highlights: Increasing interest in the healthfulness of the diets of those who participate in USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) led ERS researchers to link several unique data sets to examine the effect of SNAP on the nutritional quality of adult participants’ diets. The researchers found that participation in SNAP had a modest effect on diet quality: a small positive nutritional effect was counterbalanced by a small negative effect. United States Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General Washington, D.C. These weaknesses affect regular SNAP program benefits as well as. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest of USDA’s food and nutrition assistance programs, with approximately 47 million persons. SNAP!–!Strengths,!Needs,!Abilities,!Preferences!!! S–!Everyonehas!strengths!like!patience,!education,!faith,!a!good!home!orother. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest of USDA’s food and nutrition assistance programs, with approximately 4. SNAP provides eligible low- income households with resources to purchase food, and it has two major goals: to reduce food insecurity—uncertain access to enough food for active, healthy living due to lack of money or other resources—and to support nutritious diets among low- income households. While recent research suggests that SNAP has done well at meeting the first goal, the second has recently been a focus of public concern. The growing awareness of the health consequences—and public costs—of poor diets has led some policymakers to advocate restrictions on foods that can be purchased with SNAP benefits. For example, New York City has suggested limiting sugar- sweetened beverage purchases, and officials in South Carolina and Wisconsin tried to limit purchases of unhealthy foods with SNAP benefits. In this context, ERS researchers examined a basic question: what is the effect of SNAP on diet quality? The researchers were particularly interested in whether a change in diet could be said to be causally linked to SNAP participation, as opposed to pre- existing dietary differences that are associated with SNAP participants. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education and Evaluation Study (Wave II) Authors: Valerie Long Sheryl Cates Jonathan Blitstein Karen Deehy. SNAP benefits are distributed to participants in the program; but the real benefits are the contributions SNAP makes to society as a whole. While some signs point to an increase in whole fruit consumption by SNAP participants, that increase may be offset by a decrease in dark green and orange vegetable consumption. At the same time, the total difference in diets after accounting for the effects of SNAP shows that, as a whole, SNAP participants had slightly lower diet quality than eligible nonparticipants, although they fared better when it came to sodium and saturated fat consumption. Overall, the research finds that the effects of SNAP participation on diet quality are modest—a small positive effect is counterbalanced by a small negative effect. Researchers Take Advantage of Data Partnership To Solve Research Dilemma Previous research has found associations between SNAP participation and diet quality. However, those associations may not account for characteristics that cannot be observed. For example, SNAP participants may really value good diets and nutritious food—which is why they enroll in the program—but such preferences are not observed by researchers. If one measures the association between SNAP participation and diet quality without taking such unobserved preferences into account, one might easily overstate the beneficial effect of SNAP because participants are likely to have better diets before enrolling in SNAP anyway. Of course, the effect of SNAP could be understated just as easily if SNAP participants overall have preferences for unhealthy foods that are correlated with their willingness to enroll in SNAP. Either way, having some way to account for unobserved characteristics that are associated with both diet quality and SNAP participation is important. ERS researchers, however, have taken advantage of data made available through a partnership with the National Center for Health Statistics to address this issue. For the last 1. 5 years, States have had considerable leeway to waive or change Federal rules that govern whether a household is eligible for SNAP benefits. For example, a few States have adopted a rule that requires SNAP participants to be fingerprinted; this extra measure of surveillance has been found to decrease SNAP enrollment. Other States have waived or relaxed the restriction on financial assets for households to be eligible for SNAP. These and other State- level policy variables, which are linked to data from four waves of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), have enabled ERS researchers to identify how likely it is that a person might enroll in SNAP independent of his or her unobserved preferences for healthy or unhealthy foods. Healthy Eating Scores Calculated From Dietary Recall Data The primary data used in the analysis come from the NHANES for years 2. Federal poverty line. Three characteristics made the data ideal for this study. First, the data contain a wealth of information about respondents’ personal and household characteristics, including income, education, marital status, household size, age, race, and ethnicity. Second, the data indicate whether or not a respondent has participated in SNAP. Third, the data include responses from a dietary recall survey, which captures everything that a respondent ate over the previous 2. The foods reported in the dietary survey are transformed into an index of diet quality called the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) score. The HEI score was developed by researchers at USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion and the National Cancer Institute to measure diet quality in terms of conformance with Federal dietary guidance. This study assessed an individual’s adherence to the 2. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The HEI is the sum of scores for 1. So. FAAS). Scores for all of the food groups and oils are based on intake adequacy on a per- 1,0. For food groups that one should be eating more of, higher scores mean higher consumption. For the moderation components, which one should eat less of—saturated fat, sodium, and calories from So. FAAS—higher scores indicate that one is eating less of those things. All in all, higher scores are better. Each of the components is weighted according to its importance in the Dietary Guidelines. Total fruit, whole fruit, total vegetables, dark green and orange vegetables, total grains, and whole grains all have a maximum score of 5 for a total score of 3. Milk, meat and beans, oils, saturated fat, and sodium have a maximum score of 1. Calories from the So. FAAS group have a total score of 2. Respondents with consumption that matches or exceeds the dietary guidelines for each component get the maximum score. Those with no consumption get zero. Respondents with scores between zero and the maximum get a score that is relative to their adherence to dietary guidance—for example, eating half of the amount of whole fruit recommended gets the respondent half of the maximum score, 2. Total HEI reflects the sum of each of the components: the maximum total score is 1. The researchers used two State- level policy variables to isolate the probability of enrolling in SNAP. First, they used an indicator of whether or not the State used broad- based categorical eligibility rules to determine SNAP eligibility. In most States, this rule meant that any household that was deemed eligible for State- provided cash welfare payments through the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program would automatically be eligible for SNAP. This was a change in policy that made it easier to qualify for SNAP. Second, researchers used an indicator of whether or not States exempted one vehicle from the asset tests to determine SNAP eligibility. For States that did not adopt this policy, eligibility for SNAP is determined not only by current income but also by assets, one of which is a car. Low- income households with cars that were worth more (that is, they were newer and more dependable) were penalized because of this restriction: relaxing the policy meant that it became easier to qualify for SNAP. So having these variables in the model enables researchers to identify the probability of enrolling in SNAP without confounding it with unobserved characteristics mentioned earlier. The first shows how participation in SNAP changed diet outcomes for those who enrolled in the program. The second shows the difference in diet outcomes between participants and eligible nonparticipants, after accounting for the effects of SNAP. With respect to the first of these, for the most part, researchers found small, statistically insignificant effects of SNAP participation on diet quality for participants. However, there are two exceptions: whole fruit and dark green and orange vegetables. A closer examination of the effects for whole fruit consumption showed that the most common whole fruit score for low- income Americans and, particularly, SNAP participants is zero—that is, low- income persons on average eat no whole fruit on a given day. Given this, researchers investigated whether SNAP participation increases the probability that participants may eat any whole fruit on a given day. It turns out that the effect is large: SNAP participants are about 2. Even though SNAP increases whole fruit consumption by program participants, the effect may not be enough to close the gap between participants and nonparticipants. Model results based on a 2,5. Higher income Americans (those with incomes above 2. None of these groups meet the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which suggest that most adults consume 2 cups of fruit per day, the majority of which should be in the form of whole fruits. In considering the other measured effect of SNAP—the reduction in consumption of dark green and orange vegetables—researchers identified two factors that may account for the change. First, SNAP participation has work requirements for able- bodied nonelderly adults: persons who are working or busy looking for work may have less time to cook, so many dark green and orange vegetables—squashes, greens, and broccoli, for example—might come with prohibitive time costs.
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