Do Food Stamps Contribute to Obesity in Low-Income Women? Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979

Maoyong Fan ()

No 201005, Working Papers from Ball State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Does the Food Stamp Program (FSP), which provides in-kind transfers to low- income Americans, cause female participants to become obese? This question is particularly important because participants are substantially more likely to be obese than are nonparticipants. This paper estimates the effects of food stamp benefits on obesity, overweight and body mass index (BMI) of low-income women. Contrary to previous results, we find little evidence that the FSP causes obesity, overweight or higher BMI. Our analysis differs from previous research in three aspects. First, we exploit a rich longitudinal data set, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, to distinguish between full-time and part- time participation. Second, instead of making parametric assumptions on outcomes, we employ a variety of difference-in-difference matching estimators to control for selection bias. Third, we estimate both short-term (one-year participation) and long-term (three-year participation) treatment effects. Empirical results show that after controlling for selection bias and defining the treatment and comparison groups carefully, there is little evidence that food stamps are responsible for higher BMI or obesity in female participants. Our estimates are robust to different definitions of the treatment and comparison groups, and to various matching algorithms.

Keywords: Food Stamp Program; Obesity; Body Mass Index; Propensity Score Matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2010-03, Revised 2010-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Published in American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2010, 92(4): 1165-1180.

Downloads: (external link)
http://econfac.bsu.edu/research/workingpapers/bsuecwp201005fan.pdf First version, March 2010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do Food Stamps Contribute to Obesity in Low-Income Women? Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (2010)
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:bsu:wpaper:201005

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Ball State University, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tung Liu ().