David Ribar, Ph.D.
Earnings Volatility and the Reasons for Leaving the Food Stamp Program
This paper uses administrative records from South Carolina on food stamp households with children to look generally at the characteristics of households that contribute to exits from the Food Stamp Program and more specifically at the reasons why households leave the program. The study focuses on how earnings histories and earnings volatility are associated with different types of exits. The analyses reveal that half of South Carolina’s food stamp households with children exited because they let their certification periods lapse without filing the necessary paperwork for recertification, and a further sixth exited because they failed to provide sufficient or verifiable information. Only about one-fifth of exits were due to explicit determinations of income or resource ineligibility. The households that failed to recertify had worse economic circumstances on average—lower and more variable incomes—than households determined to be income ineligible but better circumstances than other exiting households. Households with lower benefits and higher incomes were more likely than other households to let their certifications lapse. For white households, more variable earnings histories were negatively associated with exits for income ineligibility. For both black and white households, more variable earnings histories increased the odds of leaving voluntarily or for other reasons.