Suchergebnisse

AbstractTemporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cases increased by 3.3 million between March and June 2020, their largest quarterly increase ever. During the pandemic, many states adopted a wide set of policies and procedures to facilitate program enrollment, retention, and eligibility. I track these policies and create a pandemic policy index measuring state generosity. States that adopted more generous policies experienced larger TANF and SNAP caseload growth, especially eligibility policies such as exempting TANF work requirements or SNAP P‐EBT availability. Analyzing the caseload relationship to labor markets, caseloads were less responsive to unemployment rate changes during the pandemic relative to the pre‐pandemic period.

AbstractThis paper investigates how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility affects food expenditures. A 2019 policy change in California granted SNAP eligibility to previously ineligible Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients. Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we find that after the policy change, affected SSI recipients increased their "food at home" budget share between 2.5 and 4.3 percentage points ($120 to $206 per quarter). The SNAP effect on total food expenditures is dampened by a decrease in "food away from home" which SNAP benefits cannot be spent on.

AbstractBetween the late 1970s through 2013, state Housing Finance Agencies (HFAs) financed nearly $300 billion in mortgages to low‐ and moderate‐income first‐time homebuyers. Descriptive evidence indicates that HFAs help households retain their homes at higher rates than similar households purchasing homes in the private mortgage market. Using a matched sample of HFA originations between 2005 and 2014, we estimate a multinomial logit model of mortgage default (or foreclosure) and prepayment. We find that HFA borrowers are about 30 percent less likely to default or foreclose on their mortgages than otherwise similar non‐HFA borrowers. We find that 37 percent of this HFA effect can be explained by HFA origination and service delivery practices including direct servicing and homeownership counseling.