Saturday, October 29, 2011

The SNAP (food stamp) explosion

Every couple years, we update this dynamic interactive graphic showing how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation changes in response to economic conditions and federal and state policies.  (Thanks to graduate student Dan Hatfield for data processing in this new 2010 edition, and to Hanqi Luo and Joseph Llobrera for data processing in earlier versions).

With this Google Gadget, you can track a particular state of interest, or watch all states move together. Of course, the real drama is in the final two years.

5 comments:

Marc F. Bellemare said...

Very nicely done, Parke. This is very interesting, and I think it has the potential to convince policy makers and the general public of the correlation (if not of the causal relationship) between the two more effectively than anything else.

jc said...

This is great. Is it possible to infer from this data which states have the "best" SNAP access policies? I.e. in which states is the positive relationship between unemployment and participation most pronounced and linear?

usfoodpolicy said...

In answer to jc's question, the data in this gadget shed light on that question, although more authoritative answers come from a fairly large body of statistical research that controls for other variables at the same time.

There is a nice web article on the NPR site today, linking to this gadget as part of a discussion of SNAP participation in Mississippi.

Thought+Food said...

That is an amazing way to understand how the recession is affecting the SNAP program! I would love to share it on my blog if I may?

http://applpy.wordpress.com/

Shirley said...

This is a wonderful way to show data. Might I ask how you did it? Was it through a google application? Thanks!