Abstract
We use U.S. quarterly consumption data and decomposable poverty indexes to study consumption-based intra-annual poverty and its relationship to participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Intra-annual spells of consumption-poverty account for half of the incidence and one-third of the severity of all consumption-poverty among U.S. households. Households experiencing consumption-poverty for at least one quarter, but not for the whole year, are more likely to self-select into SNAP than the general population but less likely to do so than those who are poor for the year. SNAP participation, in turn, reduces annual and intra-annual poverty.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 438-448 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Social Science Journal |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2013 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by the Southern Rural Development Center (SRDC) via USDA-ERS Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics (RIDGE). We thank George Norton, Christopher Parmeter and seminar participants at the Economic Research Service, SRDC and Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, Twin cities for valuable comments. We thank Kristine West for excellent research assistance. All errors and omissions are our own.
Keywords
- Consumption-poverty
- Food assistance
- Intra-annual poverty
- Transient poverty
