Working Paper: NBER ID: w25635
Authors: Timothy KM Beatty; Marianne P Bitler; Xinzhe Huang Cheng; Cynthia Van Der Werf
Abstract: It is well documented that individuals do not spend SNAP benefits smoothly over the month after receipt. Rather, recipients spend a disproportionate share of benefits at the beginning of the benefit month. This has costs for recipients and stores. There is also evidence that other income streams, such as Social Security and paychecks, are not spent smoothly. The presence of these other income streams may bias estimates of the effects of this SNAP cycle on consumption for working SNAP beneficiaries and those who receive other government benefits. We use data from USDA’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey to explore how the SNAP cycle is affected by accounting for these other income streams. We find suggestive evidence that the cycle is more pronounced for workers who are paid on a weekly or monthly basis, but little evidence that cycles in other income streams mitigate or exacerbate the SNAP cycle.
Keywords: SNAP; Paycheck Cycles; Expenditure Patterns; Food Security
JEL Codes: H53; I38
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| SNAP benefit cycles (I38) | spending behavior of SNAP recipients (D12) |
| paycheck cycles (J33) | SNAP benefit cycles (I38) |
| other income streams (E25) | SNAP benefit cycles (I38) |
| economic constraints (D10) | SNAP benefit cycles (I38) |