Finance

Accounting

Business

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Computer network

Biology

Agriculture

Computer graphics (images)

Economics

Ecology

Resource (disambiguation)

Disbursement

Receipt

Snap

Computer science

Food insecurity

Food security

The Review of Economics and Statistics

In this paper, we study the effects of the timing of nutritional aid disbursement on crime, using two main sources of variation: (a) a policy change in Illinois that substantially increased the number of SNAP distribution days and (b) an existing Indiana policy that issues SNAP benefits by last name. We find that staggering SNAP benefits leads to large reductions in crime and theft at grocery stores by 17.5% and 20.9%, respectively. Findings also show that theft decreases in the second and third weeks following receipt but increases in the last week of the benefit cycle due to resource constraints.

SNAP Benefits and Crime: Evidence from Changing Disbursement Schedules