The War on Poverty launched two major health and nutrition safety
net programs. The Food Stamps program (today known as SNAP) was
established in 1964. A year later, Medicare and Medicaid were
established as amendments to the Social Security Act. These are
only two programs designed to combat the impact poverty has on
health.
In this presentation, at the January 2014 War on Poverty
Conference, Hilary Hoynes discusses her research on the food
stamp program in the U.S. and the program’s impact over the past
50 years.
Hoynes is a Professor of Public Policy and Economics, and Haas
Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities at the University of
California, Berkeley. She is a Research Affiliate for the UC
Davis Center for Poverty Research and is co-editor of the leading
journal in economics, American Economic Review.
In this presentation, Kenneth Chay discusses how the 1966 Fair
Labor and Standards Act, which expanded protections to some farm
workers and increased the minimum wage, impacted hospital costs,
employment and Medicare.
Chay is a Professor of Economics and Community Health at Brown
University, as well as a Research Associate with the National
Bureau of Economic Research.
People with lower socio-economic status are much more likely to
develop heart disease than those who are wealthier or better
educated, according to a recent study by Faculty Affiliate Peter
Franks, a professor of Family and Community Medicine at UC Davis.
“Being poor or having less than a high school education can be
regarded as an extra risk when assessing a patient’s chances of
developing cardiovascular disease,” said Franks.
The literature is far from settled as to what casual impact (if
any) the modern Food Stamp Program (FSP) has on nutrition and
health. This study explores the impact of the FSP, one of the
largest antipoverty programs in the United States (comparable in
cost to the earned income tax credit and substantially larger
than Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program) in an
attempt to understand FSP effects.
A central question in public finance, one that has generated
decades of research, is how tax and transfer programs affect
labor supply. Treating food stamp benefits as an income transfer,
Research Affiliate Hilary Hoynes uses a quasi-experimental
approach to estimate the impact of the program on labor supply.
To grow up in poverty can have a lasting impact on a child. What
is less understood is how it affects the early relationships that
shape a child’s social and emotional growth.
One in five children in the United States is the child of
immigrants. These new Americans, most of whom are U.S. citizens,
are more than twice as likely as children of natives to have no
health insurance. Prior research has shown that differences in
income or employment between native and immigrant parents do not
account for the disparity in coverage.
