How do increases in SNAP benefits affect private food pantry visits?
This paper studies how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit increases affects households’ use of food pantries. We merge administrative data on SNAP benefits and food pantry use from 2018 to 2021 in a six-county region in upstate New York. We exploit exogenous variation in the timing and magnitude of SNAP benefit increases among program participants to study changes in the frequency of food pantry visits. We find that increased SNAP benefits are negatively and significantly associated with food pantry visits, but the magnitudes are very low, suggesting SNAP benefits expansions like the ones in March 2020 and December 2020 were insufficient to decrease food pantry visits significantly.