Cyclical Food Insecurity and Electronic Benefit Transfer*

Intra-month cycles in household consumption and expenditure are considered hallmarks of dynamically inconsistent behavior. I find that Electronic Benefit Transfer reduced the severity of the these cycles for SNAP (food stamp) households with children and dual-parent households. The evidence suggests an explanation based on collective dynamic inconsistency – present bias generated by the aggregation of different preferences– is more reasonable than alternative explanations, most notably stigma. The findings have implications for the optimal design of transfer disbursements, why some households fail to budget successfully and why policies that affect property rights within a household may have dynamic effects. JEL Classifications: D13; D14; D91; I38