Food stamps and America's poorest

Abstract

This paper assesses the extent to which Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—one of America's largest antipoverty programs—has reached the poorest. We compute a novel measure of the floor of income, an estimated income level of the poorest individuals in society. We measure the floor with and without SNAP benefits included in family income using 29 years of Current Population Survey (CPS) data. We correct for underreporting of SNAP participation and benefits for a subset of years and examine alternative data to assess the robustness of our findings. The analysis reveals a long-term decline in the income floor, whereas adding SNAP to income and correcting for underreporting has reversed this decline and lifted the income floor by more than 75% on average between 2011 and 2016. The declining floor and the remarkable increase in income for the poorest Americans from SNAP are not revealed by poverty headcounts, which focus on changes at the poverty threshold.