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Working
Paper Series:
06.07
Do food stamps cause obesity?
Evidence from immigrant experience
Neeraj Kaushal
Abstract:
I use changes in immigrant eligibility for food stamps under the 1996 federal law and
heterogeneous state responses to set up a natural experiment research design to study the effect of food
stamps on Body Mass Index (BMI) of adults in immigrant families. I find that in the post-1996 period
food stamps use by foreign-born unmarried mothers with a high school or lower education was 10
percentage points higher in states with substitute programs than in states that implemented the federal
ban. However, this increase in FSP participation was not associated with any statistically significant
difference in BMI. I find that FSP participation was associated a statistically insignificant 0.3
percent increase in BMI among low-educated unmarried mothers.
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