In DGO 2003, we first introduced the long-standing Work First project that is inter-disciplinary between social work and computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) with the collaboration of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS). Based on the success in our Work First project, the NC DHHS and UNC-CH have extended the collaboration ...

The purpose of this research was to investigate the associations between misperception of body weight and sociodemographic factors such as food stamp participation status, income, education, and race/ethnicity. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data from 1999-2004 and multivariate logistic regression are used to estimate how sociodemographic factors are associated with (...

Using data from the 2004 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we reexamine the impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – formerly known as the Food Stamp Program – on child food insecurity. By far the largest food assistance program in the United States, SNAP‟s central goal is to alleviate food insecurity. In this light, policymakers have been p...

Recent studies on food stamp participant households’ marginal propensity to spend out of food stamps versus income have had contradictory results: experimental studies have found household behavior aligns with standard economic theory where households’ marginal propensity to spend on food out of food stamps is equivalent to cash income; observational studies find that households have a larger m...

This paper empirically decomposes the costs of welfare participation using a model of labor supply and participation in two food assistance programs: food stamp program and WIC. The context allows for the most reliable estimates to date of the relative importance of psychological costs, or stigma, as compared to the effort required to become eligible and maintain eligibility (time costs). The r...

OBJECTIVE The present study aimed to understand the relationship between need and help-seeking behaviour in older adults by examining the patterns of food insecurity and participation in food assistance programmes (FAP), i.e. the Food Stamp Program and home-delivered meals. DESIGN Data from two longitudinal studies were used. The studies were designed to obtain nationally representative infor...

Empirical studies have shown that food stamp participants spend a higher proportion of their benefit on food than they would with an equivalent amount of cash. Our study demonstrates that this result can be explained by the decisionmaking behavior of multi-adult households. Multi-adult households spend a higher proportion of their food stamp benefit than they would with an equivalent amount of ...