The Effect of the US Safety Net on Material Hardship over Two Decades

We address a question at the center of many policy debates: how effective is the US safety net? Many existing studies evaluate the effect of one program on economic hardship in isolation, though families typically participate in multiple programs. Using 1992-2011 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, our analyses examine the simultaneous effect of participation in three programs, TANF, SNAP, or Medicaid/SCHIP, on a set of outcomes of intrinsic importance-measures of material hardship. We find that a 10 percentage point increase in participation in any of these three safety net programs by low-to-moderate income families with children reduces their average number of hardships by 0.11 (-0.41 elasticity), and the incidence of food insufficiency by 1.7 percentage points (-1.27 elasticity). This analysis suggests that hardship would be even more prevalent in the United States without the existence of the current safety net programs.