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Title: The Impact of Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Child Obesity
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Schmeiser, Maximilian D.
The Impact of Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Child Obesity
Presented: Boston, MA, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Research Conference, Thirty-second Annual, 4-6 November, 2010.
Also: https://www.appam.org/conferences/fall/boston2010/sessions/panelinfo.asp?id=HEALTH-03&type=detail
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult
Publisher: Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM)
Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Child Growth; Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); Family Income; Food Stamps (see Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program); Geocoded Data; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Modeling, Instrumental Variables; Obesity; State-Level Data/Policy; Weight

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In September of 2009 participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) reached an all time high of 37.2 million persons. A significant body of research has emerged suggesting that participation in the SNAP increases the probability of being obese for adult women and has little effect on obesity for adult men; however the evidence on the effect of SNAP participation on child obesity is much more tenuous. Moreover, to date no research has adequately addresses the endogeneity between SNAP participation and weight. This paper examines the effect of long-term SNAP participation on the Body Mass Index (BMI) percentile, and probability of being overweight or obese for children ages 5 through 18 using data from the Children and Young Adults of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and an instrumental variables identification strategy that exploits exogenous variation in eligibility for the SNAP based on the labor supply response to changes in state and federal Earned Income Tax Credit programs, as well as state level variation in SNAP eligibility requirements. Doing so, SNAP participation is found to significantly reduce BMI percentile and the probability of being overweight or obese for both boys and girls ages 5 through 11 and boys ages 12 through 18. For girls ages 12 through 18, SNAP participation appears to increase BMI percentile and the probability of being overweight or obese. Therefore, the expansion of the SNAP presents one possible policy intervention for reducing the obesity prevalence among children.
Bibliography Citation
Schmeiser, Maximilian D. "The Impact of Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Child Obesity." Presented: Boston, MA, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Research Conference, Thirty-second Annual, 4-6 November, 2010.