Household Assets and Food Stamp Program Participation Among Eligible Low-Income Households

Abstract

This study examines the association between asset ownership and Food Stamp Program participation among eligible households using a sample from a longitudinal national survey. This study employs two approaches: a multinomial logit regression on the level of program participation and an event history analysis on the duration of eligible nonparticipation spells. Analysis results show that asset ownership, especially vehicle ownership, is negatively related to program participation, suggesting that asset ownership may reduce the chance that eligible low-income households receive food assistance. It is recommended that program administrators simplify procedures and expand outreach to facilitate program participation among low-income asset owners.

Keywords:

• vehicle
• homeownership
• financial assets
• public assistance

Notes

1. The title of the federal Food Stamp Program (FSP) was changed to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in October 2008. We use FSP because our study covers data collected between 1996 and 2000, the period before the program title change.

2. We replaced values less than 1 with “1” before log-transforming the variable to prevent missing values.

3. The event history analysis sample (N = 942) only includes a subset of eligible households from the level-of-participation sample (N = 3,528). Because those included in the event history analysis sample may differ from those excluded from the sample, we compare baseline demographic characteristics of these two groups. Results indicates that in general, households in the event history analysis sample are better off than those only included in the level-of-participation sample: the household heads in the event history sample are older, more likely to be non-Hispanic White and married, and have higher level of educational attainment than those excluded from this sample. In addition, households in the event history analysis sample are more likely to own vehicles, homes, and bank accounts. These differences between the two samples are expected because households excluded from the event history analysis sample are eligible for FSP at the first observation and a substantial proportion of them are likely to remain eligible for a long time.