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Federal nutrition programs and childhood obesity: inside the black box

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Abstract

In response to the dramatic rise in childhood obesity, particularly among low income individuals, federal nutrition assistance programs have come under scrutiny. However, the vast majority of this research focuses on the direct relationship between these programs and child health, while little is known about the mechanisms by which such relationships arise. Using the 2007 American Time Use Survey and the Eating and Health Module, we explore differences in time use—albeit in a non-causal framework—across families that participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the School Breakfast Program, and the National School Lunch Program to better understand behavioral differences across participants and non-participants. These differences have important implications for future research and policy.

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Notes

  1. Obese is defined as an age- and gender-specific body mass index (BMI) greater than the 95th percentile based on growth charts from the Center for Disease Control (CDC). See http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_07_08/obesity_child_07_08.htm#table.

  2. See Bhattacharya and Sood (2011) for a more detailed discussion of this issue.

  3. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-establishing-a-task-force-childhood-obesit.

  4. FSP changed its name to SNAP in October 2008. For simplicity, we simply refer to SNAP throughout the paper.

  5. See http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ296/pdf/PLAW-111publ296.pdf.

  6. Angelucci and Di Maro (2010) discuss spillovers arising from behavioral changes in a related context. Specifically, they focus on behavioral changes in the control group arising from witnessing the behavior of the treatment group receiving a specific policy intervention.

  7. To be precise, the ATUS only provides information on whether children eat a school-provided breakfast or lunch, not whether such meals are provided through the USDA’s SBP or NSLP. Thus, it is possible that some schools provide meals outside the purview of the USDA. By doing so, schools are not bound by federal nutrition guidelines, but in exchange they are not entitled to any federal funds. There is no available information of which we are aware concerning the frequency of this occurrence.

  8. See http://www.fns.usda.gov/FSP/rules/Legislation/about.htm for a detailed historical account.

  9. Hinrichs (2009) provides an excellent historical background of the NSLP. See also http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Lunch/AboutLunch/NSLP-Program%20History.pdf..

  10. See http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/breakfast/AboutBFast/ProgHistory.htm.

  11. See http://www.fns.usda.gov/FSP/rules/Legislation/about.htm.

  12. See http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/SNAPsummary.htm.

  13. See http://www.fns.usda.gov/fns/key_data/june-2010.pdf.

  14. In 2009-2010, nearly 100,000 schools participated in NSLP, while roughly 87,000 participated in SBP (see http://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/us.pdf). In 2007–2008 there were roughly 99,000 public elementary and secondary schools and 33,000 private schools (see http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84). In addition, 32 states had some type of mandate concerning SBP and/or NSLP participation (see http://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/sbscorecard2010.pdf).

  15. The facts reported here may be found at http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Breakfast/AboutBFast/SBPFactSheet.pdf and http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/AboutLunch/NSLPFactSheet.pdf and http://www.fns.usda.gov/fns/key_data/june-2010.pdf.

  16. For lunch, severe need means that more than 60% of students qualified for free or reduced price lunches two years prior. Reimbursement rates apply only to the 48 contiguous states; rates are higher for Alaska and Hawaii. See http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Governance/notices/naps/NAPs10-11.pdf.

  17. For breakfast, severe need means that more than 40% of students qualified for free or reduced price lunches two years prior. As with lunch, reimbursement rates apply only to the 48 contiguous states; rates are higher for Alaska and Hawaii. See http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Governance/notices/naps/NAPs10-11.pdf.

  18. See http://www.schoolnutrition.org/Blog.aspx?id=12832&blogid=564.

  19. See http://www.fns.usda.gov/ora/menu/Published/CNP/FILES/SNDAIII-Vol1ExecSum.pdf.

  20. See http://www.fns.usda.gov/SNAP/retailers/eligible.ht.

  21. See http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/HIP/default.htm.

  22. While the ATUS provides information on activities listed as primary activities in the time-diary, individuals sometimes multitask and this information is not recorded by the ATUS.

  23. Specifically, we use the answers to three questions posed to the respondent (see footnote 8):

    1. 1.

      In the past week, did any of your household children under the age of 19 eat a breakfast that was prepared and served at a school, a paid day care provider, a Head Start center, or a summer day program?

    2. 2.

      In the past week, did any of your household children under the age of 19 eat a lunch that was prepared and served at a school, a paid day care provider, a Head Start center, or a summer day program?

    3. 3.

      In the past 30 days, did you or anyone in your household get food stamp benefits?

  24. Note, nearly all students who eat a school-provided breakfast also eat a school-provided lunch. Thus, we do not consider seperate categories for SBP alone or SBP and SNAP but not NSLP.

  25. All results reported are weighted by sample weights provided in the EH module.

  26. See, e.g., Liu et al. (2006) and Bitler and Haider (2010) and the references cited.

  27. Note, however, that four respondents in our sample report participation in SNAP—either in isolation or with NSLP—along with a household income greater than $75,000. Most likely this is indicative of measurement error in one of the variables. In the entire ATUS sample, there are 799 respondents that report participation in SNAP; 15 (or 0.88%) also report a household income greater than $75,000.

  28. BMI is defined as body weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared.

  29. No adolescent respondents report participating in SNAP and NSLP but not SBP. Hence, this treatment category is omitted.

  30. Following the results in Stewart (2009), we estimate time allocations using OLS instead of tobit models. We did also estimate the model by tobit with few substantitive differences. Results are available upon request.

  31. Note, the total sample size is now 3,843 as we include an additional 50 observations that report participation in SBP only or SBP and SNAP (but not NSLP). Given the small number in each of these two treatments, however, we do not include treatment dummies for these categories. The results are nearly identical – and available upon request— if we exclude these 50 observations.

  32. See http://www.letsmove.gov/tfco_fullreport_may2010.pdf.

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Acknowledgments

This study was conducted by Georgia State University and Southern Methodist University under a cooperative agreement with the US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Food and Nutrition Assistance Research Program (agreement no. 58-5000-8-0097). The authors wish to thank Jessica Todd, Karen Hamrick, Patricia Anderson, Michael Grossman, Ted Joyce, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Southern Methodist University, Box 0496, Dallas, TX, 75275-0496, USA

    Manan Roy & Daniel L. Millimet

  2. IZA, Bonn, Germany

    Daniel L. Millimet

  3. Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Rusty Tchernis

  4. NBER, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Rusty Tchernis

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  1. Manan Roy
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Correspondence to Daniel L. Millimet.

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Roy, M., Millimet, D.L. & Tchernis, R. Federal nutrition programs and childhood obesity: inside the black box. Rev Econ Household 10, 1–38 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-011-9130-9

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