In a new working paper for the Great Recession Initiative, Robert A. Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University explores the extent to which families that participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—or food stamps—also receive benefits from other federal aid programs, such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). As he finds, in 2008, 76 percent of families receiving SNAP also participated in at least one other major benefit, excluding Medicaid. However, over half of these only received one other benefit and only a very small fraction received more than two others.

As Moffitt explains, analyzing SNAP families’ participation in additional social safety net programs is crucial for understanding the other needs of SNAP households—such as whether these households tend to include family members with disabilities—or if overall, they simply have such low income that they require additional support for other expenses such as housing and medical care. Noting that policy analysts and scholars have long expressed concerns that the receipt of multiple programs may have negative effects on work incentives, Moffitt also investigates whether multiple-program participation by SNAP families deters household members from seeking employment.

One of the most important components of the social safety net in the U.S., SNAP was the second-largest federal program in terms of both expenditures and recipients in 2011, ranking only behind Medicaid. Moffitt’s research maps out exactly which programs and combinations of program benefits are received by SNAP participants, covering two years in the Great Recession—an early year (2008) and a later year (2010)—as well as 2004 and 1993, in order to identify long-term trends.

Click here to read the abstract and download the paper.