Working Paper: NBER ID: w25143
Authors: Bruce D. Meyer; Nikolas Mittag; Robert M. Goerge
Abstract: Accurately measuring government benefit receipt in household surveys is necessary when studying disadvantaged populations and the programs that serve them. The Food Stamp Program is especially important given its size and recent growth. To validate survey reports, we use administrative data on participation in two states linked to the American Community Survey (ACS), the Current Population Survey (CPS), and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We find that 23 percent of true food stamp recipient households do not report receipt in the SIPP, 35 percent in the ACS, and fully 50 percent in the CPS. A substantial number of true non-recipients are also recorded as recipients, especially in the SIPP. We examine reasons for these errors including imputation, an important source of error. Both false negative and false positive reports vary with household characteristics, implying complicated biases in multivariate analyses, such as regressions. We then directly examine biases in common survey-based estimates of program receipt by comparing them to estimates from our combined administrative and survey data. We find that the survey estimates understate participation among single parents, non-whites, and low-income households, and also lead to errors in multiple program receipt, and time and age patterns of receipt.
Keywords: Food Stamp Program; Survey Reporting; Imputation; Household Surveys
JEL Codes: C81; C83; H53; I32; I38
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| survey design (C83) | accuracy of reporting food stamp receipt (I38) |
| household characteristics (R20) | false positive reporting (C52) |
| household characteristics (R20) | biased estimates in regression models (C51) |
| survey errors (C83) | understanding of program participation (H53) |
| survey errors (C83) | underreporting in survey data (C83) |