Affiliations: [a] Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco,
CA, USA | [b] Abt Associates, Cambridge, MA, USA | [c] Economic Research Service, US Department of
Agriculture, Washington, DC, USA | [d] Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco,
CA, USA
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Caroline Danielson, Policy
Fellow, Public Policy Institute of California, 500 Washington Street, Suite 600,
San Francisco, CA 94111, USA. Tel.: +1 415 291 4462; E-mail:
danielson@ppic.org
Abstract: Over the past decade and a half legislative and regulatory changes at the federal
level have given US states additional authority to design their Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP). This devolution of policymaking authority
has led to considerable ambiguity at the national level about the policies that
states have put in place. Drawing on a new survey of state SNAP administrators,
this paper characterizes two key areas of policy devolution: the treatment of
household assets in eligibility determinations and participants' paperwork
burden. We find asset and reporting policy changes to be widespread, and the
states that have made changes most often adopt the most expansive policy change
allowed. We also demonstrate that more accurate policy data sharpens the
inferences we make about the effects of several of these policies on
participation in SNAP.
Keywords: Nutrition assistance, state policies, social safety net
