Effects of competing food desert policies on store format choice among SNAP participants

Joel Cuffey and Timothy Beatty

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2022, vol. 104, issue 4, 1485-1511

Abstract: We measure how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants respond to policies designed to improve access to retail food store formats that stock healthy foods, specifically grocery stores. Supply‐side policies seek to increase the supply of grocery stores by subsidizing store openings. Demand‐side policies seek to increase the demand for food from grocery stores by, for example, increasing benefits. Unique SNAP administrative data allow us to estimate and compare impacts of grocery store openings and a SNAP benefit increase at a fine geographic scale. We find both policies increase shopping at grocery stores relative to other store formats but observe substantive impacts for grocery store openings only among households in very close proximity to the opening. Furthermore, we find that the impacts are mediated by car ownership and food desert status. In particular, households without cars in food deserts exhibit the largest impact. Grocery store openings decrease SNAP spending shares primarily at ethnic stores, whereas benefit increases decrease SNAP spending shares at convenience stores. Neither policy decreases total SNAP spending at convenience stores. The spillover effects on shopping at other store formats therefore make the potential effect on access to healthy food ambiguous.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12275

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:ajagec:v:104:y:2022:i:4:p:1485-1511

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Agricultural Economics from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().