This research examines health insurance coverage among families who have left welfare, using data on approximately 3,000 current and former welfare recipients from the California Health and Social Services Survey.
The Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (SEBTC), a demonstration by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, aims to mitigate summer child food insecurity by leveraging existing electronic benefit transfer technologies used by the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In the first year of the demonstration (2011), based on 5,000 households in five sites, researchers found significant reductions in the prevalence of food insecurity and very low food security among children. The second year (2012) included 14 sites and approximately 27,000 households with eligible children in the evaluation.
The diets of Americans fall far short of recommended dietary guidelines, and those who live in low-income households have even poorer diets than higher-income households. Many low-income Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The program's dual goals are to improve food security and nutrition. Among the possible strategies to address dietary shortfalls among low-income Americans is to increase the SNAP benefit. This article uses data from the random assignment evaluation of the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer for Children demonstration to add new insights on the impact of SNAP on diet quality for households receiving SNAP who also received SNAP-like benefits through Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer for Children. Households received $60 each month per eligible school-aged child. The objective of the evaluation was to see if Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer for Children improved children's food security and nutrition. The evaluation surveyed these households to collect information about food expenditures, food security, and children's diets. For households receiving SNAP in sites that used the SNAP Electronic Benefit Transfer delivery system, the analysis showed increases in food expenditures and decreases in levels of food insecurity. The analysis also indicates improvements in dietary quality among school-aged children, but the impacts were modest.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has grown rapidly in recent years—by about 50% in the seven years between 2000 and 2007, and by another 70% in the four years between 2007 and 2011—such that in 2011, SNAP served 14% of the U.S. population. Contributing to our understanding of the causes of this very rapid increase in the caseload, this article extends the time period of analysis through and past the official end of the Great Recession, analyzes more geographically disaggregated caseloads and the impact of substate economic conditions, and considers the impact of recent major, state‐level SNAP policy changes. In models that exploit substate‐level data, we find consistent evidence of significant impacts of both the substate level and statewide economy on local area SNAP caseloads. Surprisingly, while one might have expected more geographically disaggregated data to improve the alignment of the measurement with the concept of interest (i.e., the labor market opportunities of an individual), and therefore lead to larger estimates of the impact of the economy, in fact estimates fall—perhaps due to measurement error. We find at best mixed evidence of policy impacts. Simulations indicate that the economy can account for most of the 2007 to 2011 increase in the caseload, although relatively less of the 2000 to 2007 increase. Nonetheless, the role of the economy in driving caseloads appears to be substantial in both periods.
This report is one of two from a research study commissioned from RAND by the Welfare Policy Research Project’s advisory board on behalf of the State of California. Welfare reform of the mid-1990s was intended to encourage recipients to leave cash assistance while continuing their participation in other work-support programs, in particular, the Food Stamp, Medi- Cal, and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) programs. Early reports suggested that participation in, or “take-up” of, such programs was low. In response, WPRP issued a Request for Proposals (RFP), “Employed Former Recipients’ Use of Income Support Programs,” to study the use of Food Stamps, Medi-Cal, and the federal EITC among Californians who left cash assistance. The RFP focused on people who left cash aid with paid employment and who remained eligible for one or more of the three programs.
This paper uses the implementation of the new Medicaid 1931(b) program in California and its 58 counties to consider multi-site implementation. Given California’s county-operated welfare system, the California Department of Health Services (CDHS) made policy that each of the state’s 58 counties was to implement. Combining unusually rich administrative data, official documents, and qualitative field work, the authors find that actual implementation occurred as much as several years later than was required by state-level policy, with considerable heterogeneity across the counties, and that the heterogeneity was to a great extent due to the details of computer systems. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for implementation and the study of implementation.
These essays review the implications of the new fiscal federalism for the states, particularly California, from the perspective of intergovernmental relations, fiscal impact, program administration, and the consequences for the public.
Over the last three decades, abortion policy has been among the most contentious of political and legal issues in the united States, In this period, every state has enacted laws and promulgated regulations relating to abortion - such as those regarding the conditions under which abortion is legal, the provision of Medicaid funding for abortion, and requirements for the involvement of minors' parents in the abortion decision.
