Research Opportunities Concerning the Causes and Consequences of Child Food Insecurity and Hunger Workshop Summary (2013) / Chapter Skim
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7 Public Policy Responses to Hunger
7 Public Policy Responses to Hunger
Pages 76-93
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From page 76... ...
The exception is the effects of food and nutrition assistance programs." Ribar then defined a conceptual model, followed by a descriptive typology of existing public and private food assistance programs. He discussed the evidence available on the effective 1Ribar (2013)
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model of how household food security is determined. The Barrett model adapted Becker's (1965)
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weak availability of public and private safety nets. In a dynamic framework, other factors put households at risk, such as operating close to one of the constraint levels.
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Public and Private Food Assistance Programs There are three general strategies for providing food assistance in the United States. One is to supplement household resources, which effectively lifts the budget constraint and gives households more opportunity to produce better outcomes for their children.
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Numerous states have commodity support programs, such as the New Jersey State Food Purchase Program. Chapter 6 discussed private food assistance programs that provide general assistance, such as food banks and food kitchens.
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. There is evidence in particular studies that food assistance programs increase expenditures on food, but these expenditure increases are less than a dollar for a dollar.
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The maximum SNAP benefits are set each year based on the cost of the USDA Thrifty Food Plan, a basket of foods that can be obtained at low cost while still providing a nutritious diet. Ribar expressed concerns with this approach.
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Households may be receiving assistance from other programs, which in turn positively impact food insecurity. As discussed earlier, Ribar noted that some people advocate looking at food systems more broadly to include problems in communities, reduced economic opportunities, neighborhood food resources, and emergency assistance (Ganapathy, Duffy, and Getz, 2005)
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. Ribar said there are also problems with measuring "participation" in food assistance programs, and lack of statistical power is a big issue.
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He said researchers should investigate the range and combinations of food assistance program and include these combinations in empirical work. Food assistance programs are helping households that exist in the context of multiple problems, including health issues, housing insecurity, and energy insecurity.
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She reported that survey respondents reported how much their household spent on food, their use of food assistance programs, and whether
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For each program, their predicted participation positively predicted actual participation in that program. She summarized the findings: A more generous cash and food safety net reduces low food security in families with children; there is no evidence that the distribution between cash and food affects food security; and there is no evidence for an effect of health insurance provision.
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From page 88... ...
In trying to model household eligibility, Shore-Sheppard and her colleagues noted that the current process places a premium on parents who can manage complexity, and there is little knowledge of why some lowincome households have low food security and others do not. She wondered about seasonality of food security status, an aspect that will not be picked up in current measures where surveys are conducted once a year.
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From page 89... ...
He said that there is a risk of asking food assistance programs to do too much if the underlying economic situation is not first addressed. Weill noted that he overheard a colleague state that the best use of $10 million to address the causes and consequences of child hunger would be to learn to communicate with politicians.
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This inadequacy issue underscores the importance of being cautious about overstating shortcomings and understating the positive impacts of the existing programs. Those programs are the strongest strands in the safety net for children, and they are crucial in preventing hunger and increasing food security.
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He also suggested research to consider whether improvements in benefits in SNAP and SNAP-like programs can be viewed as key mechanisms to boost food security. He called for a close examination of the impact of 2008 and 2009 congressional actions that significantly increased the EITC value and particularly the value of the Child Tax Credit; growth in participation in the SBP; and changes in school meal standards as other areas of potential research.
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From page 92... ...
He also clarified a point made by Ribar: The questions about children's food security in the CPS HFSSM are now asked in any household with children, regardless of how the household respondent answered questions about adult food security. Households with incomes under about 200 percent of the poverty line are asked three food security questions about children.
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From page 93... ...
He said that it is a clear demonstration that very low food security for children is subject to improvement through a known form of changing benefits. In this case, the benefit was $60 per summer month for each school-aged child in the household.
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