Chart of the Day: SNAP participation of families with December-born versus January-born babies
My chart of the day is from the paper “Income and the Take-Up of Means Tested Programs” by Amanda Eng and Kevin Rinz. They use variation in tax liability for families with babies born in December versus January to see if that has an effect on SNAP (ie food stamps) takeup and benefit amount. They find that SNAP participation increases after childbirth, but not differentially for December versus January births, as their Figure 10 shows.
The child timing matters for families because a child born before December 31 of a given year likely qualifies the family for tax credits for that tax year, while a January baby does not. Eng and Rinz estimate “that having a child in December instead of January results in a $2,219 (s.e. = 1,417) decrease in tax liability in the child’s first year of life”. Yet, it seems that there are not families on the margin of SNAP receipt that are moved to not receiving by this additional cash on hand. That probably means both sets of families, the ones with January born babies as well as December born babies, could use both sets of support, but only the families of December born babies receive it.