← Research WORKING PAPER · 2023

The Effectiveness of the Food Stamp Program at Reducing Racial Differences in the Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty

Benjamin Glasner, Ronald B. Mincy, Zachary Parolin, Christopher Wimer

Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Summary

This working paper studies whether childhood access to the Food Stamp Program (SNAP’s predecessor) affects poverty in adulthood, and whether its effects differ by race. Exploiting the program’s staggered county-by-county rollout, the paper finds that Food Stamp Program access reduced adult poverty by five percentage points overall. The reduction is substantially larger for Black adults whose parents lacked a high school education, including a nine-point reduction in deep poverty for that group, narrowing racial gaps in intergenerational economic mobility.

A plain-language summary written for this site, not the authors' published abstract. See the published version for the original.

Cite this

Benjamin Glasner, Ronald B. Mincy, Zachary Parolin, and Christopher Wimer. 2023. “The Effectiveness of the Food Stamp Program at Reducing Racial Differences in the Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty.” Washington Center for Equitable Growth. https://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/the-effectiveness-of-the-food-stamp-program-at-reducing-differences-in-the-intergenerational-persistence-of-poverty/.

BibTeX

@techreport{glasner_parolin_2023_foodstamp,
  title = {The Effectiveness of the {Food Stamp Program} at Reducing Racial Differences in the Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty},
  author = {Glasner, Benjamin and Mincy, Ronald B. and Parolin, Zachary and Wimer, Christopher},
  institution = {Washington Center for Equitable Growth},
  year = {2023},
  month = may,
}