Research
2015
Based on the barometer of food insecurity, this report demonstrates that seniors continue to face increasing challenges despite the end of the Great Recession. Specifically, in 2013 we find that 15.5% of seniors marginally food insecurer, 8.7% are food insecure, and 3.3% are very low food secure. This translates into 9.6 million, 5.4 million, and 2.0 million seniors, respectively. Since the onset of the recession in 2007 until 2013, the number of seniors experiencingfood insecurity has increased by 68%.
This paper discusses the history of the TANF program, participation, and spending. Also discussed are the goals of TANF legislation, changes in rules regarding utilization of cash welfare, especially the introduction of work requirements under the 1996 legislation. The author also offers a theorhetical discussion and a review of the empirical literature regarding TANF. The paper was prepared for a National Business and Economic Research conference on Dec. 5-6, 2014.
2014
This paper provides the first nationally representative estimates of how unemployment insurance (UI) generosity in the United States affects the search intensity of unemployed individuals using individual level variation in UI generosity.
In this paper, we describe the relationship between SNAP and food consumption. We first present the neoclassical framework for analyzing in-kind transfers, which unambiguously predicts that SNAP will increase food consumption, and follow this with an explanation of the SNAP benefit formula. We then present new evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey on food spending patterns among households overall, SNAP households, and other subgroups of interest. We find that a substantial fraction of SNAP households spend an amount that is above the program’s needs standard.
Despite growing attention to the unintended intergenerational consequences of incarceration, little is known about whether and how paternal incarceration is related to children’s food insecurity, an especially acute and severe form of deprivation. In this article, I use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a cohort of urban children born to mostly unmarried mothers, to examine the relationship between paternal incarceration and food insecurity among young children.
Adverse childhood experiences, including abuse, neglect, and household instability affect lifelong health and economic potential. While relationships between household food insecurity and caregiver's childhood exposure to abuse and neglect are underexplored, preliminary evidence indicates that caregivers reporting very low food security report traumatic events in their childhoods that lead to poor physical and mental health.
The aim of this paper is to assess the adequacy of the data infrastructure in the United States to meet future research and policy evaluation needs as it pertains to income, program participation, poverty, and financial vulnerability. I first discuss some major research themes that are likely to dominate policy and scientific discussions in the coming decade.
This project examines why very low food security status among children is different across households with very similar measured resources. Controlling for measures of income-to-needs, we examine whether elements in the environment, household characteristics, or behaviors are systematically correlated with VLFS among children.
Concern about spatial access to food retailers and food assistance resources has increased in recent years, placing greater importance on understanding how connections to the local food resource infrastructure shapes food security. This is especially true during the Great Recession era, during which time a greater incidence of economic shocks has contributed to rising food insecurity and rising food assistance caseloads.
In this report we provide an overview of the extent and distribution of food insecurity in 2012 among seniors, along with trends over the past decade using national and state-level data from the December Supplements to the Current Population Survey (CPS). Based on the full set of 18 questions in the Core Food Security Module (CFSM), the module used by the USDA to establish the official food insecurity rates of households in the United States, our emphasis here is on quantifying the senior population facing the threat of hunger (i.e. marginally food insecure).