Impoverished Children with Access to Food Stamps become Healthier and Wealthier Adults

At Microeconomic Insights:

Impoverished children with access to food stamps become healthier and wealthier adults: Adults who participated in the Food Stamp Program, renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2008, as children are healthier and better off financially than poverty-stricken families who did not have access to the program, according to findings in joint work with Douglas Almond and Diane Schanzenbach (this paper and a companion paper Almond, et al. 2011). Children with access were more likely as adults to graduate from high school, earn more, and rely less on government welfare programs as adults than impoverished children who did not have access to SNAP. Women, in particular, are substantially more likely to self-report they are in good health and are more economically self-sufficient in adulthood. We find no additional long-term health impacts for children from more exposure to the program during middle childhood, but individuals with access to food stamps before age 5 had measurably better health outcomes in adulthood with significant impacts for those in early childhood. ...

Policy lessons

In terms of policy, it’s important to recognize that the benefits of SNAP not only include improved food security in the short-run, but the program also helps prevent negative, long-term, and lasting effects of deprivation during childhood, such as less education and earnings as adults, along with health problems like obesity, heart disease, or diabetes.

Because these individuals are healthier and more financially sound, the benefits also pay out to taxpayers. Healthier Americans leads to less cost when it comes to future health care for the average taxpayer. Additionally, by increasing self-sufficiency, SNAP today can reduce the future costs of safety net programs and also increase tax revenues in the long run.

Our findings suggest that the SNAP benefits that go to children are better thought of as an investment rather than as charity.