The interactive role of SNAP participation and residential neighborhood in childhood obesity

ABSTRACT

Nationally representative studies of childhood obesity have examined the roles played by neighborhood conditions and by SNAP use, but not the effects of these factors together or in interaction. We used restricted, geocoded data from the 1986–2012 Child and Young Adult sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth with sibling fixed effects models to explore the effects of time receiving SNAP within disadvantaged neighborhoods on child obesity. Time participating in SNAP during ages 2–8 and ages 14–18 was associated with a lower proportion of time obese for children in disadvantaged neighborhoods, to an increasing degree as the level of neighborhood advantage declined. Given that most individuals who spend an extended period of time using SNAP live in the least advantaged neighborhoods, these results suggest that SNAP participation during these childhood years may help to reduce proportion of time obese as a child. Overall, results of this investigation suggest that participation in SNAP may have protective effects for children living in low-income households within disadvantaged neighborhoods.

KEYWORDS:

• Obesity
• SNAP
• neighborhood effects
• poverty
• BMI

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Thomas P. Vartanian, Ph.D., is a professor at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College. He has published extensively on the SNAP/Food Stamp Programs and on long-term neighborhood effects. He has numerous grants to examine SNAP and TANF, including grants from the Economic Research Service at the USDA, the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, the RIDGE Center for Targeted Studies at Purdue University, and the Joint Center for Poverty Research at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.

Linda Houser, Ph.D., is an associate professor and Ph.D. Program Director at Widener University’s Center for Social Work Education whose practice and research focus on health and health disparities, employment, and caregiving. Recent publications on topics including place-based health disparities, family leave, and work life integration for parents of children with autism have appeared in publications such as Demography, Families in Society, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities.