The Effect of Food Assistance Work Requirements on Labor Market Outcomes
September 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-54
Abstract
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly named the Food Stamp Program, has long been an integral part of the US social safety net. During US welfare reforms in the mid-1990s, SNAP eligibility became more restrictive with legislation citing a need to improve self-sufficiency of participating households. As a result, legislatures created two of these eligibility requirements: the General Work Requirement (GWR), which forces an adult to work to receive benefits, and the Able-Bodied Adult Without Dependents (ABAWD) work requirement, which requires certain adults to work a certain number of hours to receive benefits. Using restricted-access SNAP microdata from nine states, we exploit age cutoffs of the ABAWD work requirement and General Work Requirement (GWR) to estimate the effect of these policies on labor outcomes. We find that at the ABAWD age cutoff, there is no statistically significant evidence of a discontinuity across static and dynamic employment outcomes. At the GWR age cutoff, unemployed SNAP users and SNAP-eligible adults are on average more likely to leave the labor force than to continue to search for work.
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labor,
policymakers,
workforce,
welfare,
enrollment,
poverty,
exemption,
benefit,
unemployed,
eligibility,
eligible,
disability,
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Department of Agriculture,
Decennial Census,
American Community Survey,
Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board,
Regression Discontinuity Design,
Federal Poverty Level,
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,
Federal Statistical Research Data Center,
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
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