Welfare Implications of Increased Retailer Participation in SNAP

Anne T. Byrne, Xiao Dong, Jessie Handbury, Erik James, Katherine Meckel and Andrés C. Rovira

No 34467, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Governments often rely on private vendors to deliver in-kind benefits, yet little is known about how vendor participation affects markets and welfare. We study a sharp rise in retailer participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the Great Recession, driven largely by non-grocer formats. Linking administrative, retail, and household data, we find that sales increased 6% and variety 4% at adopting stores, with no price effects and only modest spillovers to local competitors. A revealed-preference framework shows that, while consumers value adoption at some chains, overall welfare gains for SNAP households were modest-equivalent to a 1.8% reduction in travel costs-with little effect on non-SNAP households.

JEL-codes: D12 H53 I38 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-11
Note: CH IO PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34467.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:nbr:nberwo:34467

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34467
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().