COEP Replication File for “The Effect of Household Debt on Safety-Net Participation”

We examine how participation in the Food Stamp Program (FSP)/ Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program responds to changes in state level household debt using administrative, quarterly data from 1999-2019. Using dynamic panel models, we find no consistently significant relationship. We argue this fails to capture the systemic structure of the safety-net and household finances. Using a panel vector autoregression to systemically model this relationship shows TANF is generally unresponsive to a one standard deviation shock to debt innovations, while FSP/SNAP participation responds significantly, substantially, and persistently, rising 10.99% cumulatively over 10 quarters.