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Author: Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas

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1.	Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas
1.	Essays on the Effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Adult Obesity Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, Georgia State University, 2014 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Data Quality/Consistency; Food Stamps (see Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program); Geocoded Data; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Modeling, Instrumental Variables; Obesity; State-Level Data/Policy; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps); Underreporting Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. The first essay expands on previous work examining the effects of SNAP participation on adult obesity. Previous research provides some evidence that SNAP participation may have a small positive effect on weight gain for women and no significant effect on men. However, additional research has found that misreporting of SNAP participation in surveys is prevalent and that analysis of program effects when participation is misclassified (misreported) can produce estimates that are biased and misleading. Until now, nearly all studies examining the effects of SNAP on adult obesity have ignored the issue of respondent misreporting. This chapter uses state-level policy variables regarding SNAP administration to instrument for SNAP participation for NLSY79 respondents. To address respondent misreporting I adopt an approach based on parametric methods for misclassified binary dependent variables that produces consistent estimates when using instrumental variables. This study is the first to document the considerable rates of SNAP participation under-reporting in the NLSY79 dataset. In addition, this study finds that, although SNAP participation increases adult BMI and the likelihood of being obese, without correcting for misreporting bias the estimates are overstated by nearly 100 percent. The second essay takes a different approach to investigate the intensive margin effects of SNAP on adult obesity. To mitigate the severity of endogenous participation and misreporting biases, I employ a strategy that examines only individuals who report participating in SNAP. I utilize a quasi-experimental variation in SNAP amount per adult due to the timing of school eligibility for children. The identification examines intensive margin changes SNAP benefits due to changes in household composition. This study finds that increases in SNAP benefits available to adults actually reduce BMI and the probability of being severely obese.
	Bibliography Citation Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas. Essays on the Effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Adult Obesity. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, Georgia State University, 2014.

2.	Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas McCarthy, Ian M. Tchernis, Rusty
2.	What Can we Learn about the Effects of Food Stamps on Obesity in the Presence of Misreporting? American Journal of Agricultural Economics 98,4 (July 2016): 997-1017. Also: http://ajae.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/4/997 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Oxford University Press Keyword(s): Food Stamps (see Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program); Modeling, Instrumental Variables; Obesity; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps); Underreporting Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. There is an increasing perception among policy makers that food stamp benefits contribute positively to adult obesity rates. We show that these results are heavily dependent on ones assumptions regarding the accuracy of reported food stamp participation. When allowing for misreporting, we find no evidence that SNAP participation significantly increases the probability of being obese or overweight among adults. Our results also highlight the inherent bias and inconsistency of common point estimates when ignoring misreporting, with treatment effects from instrumental variable methods exceeding the non-parametric upper bounds by over 200% in some cases.
	Bibliography Citation Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas, Ian M. McCarthy and Rusty Tchernis. "What Can we Learn about the Effects of Food Stamps on Obesity in the Presence of Misreporting? ." American Journal of Agricultural Economics 98,4 (July 2016): 997-1017.

3.	Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas Tchernis, Rusty
3.	Measuring Effects of SNAP on Obesity at the Intensive Margin NBER Working Paper No. 22681, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2016. Also: http://nber.org/papers/w22681 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Food Stamps (see Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program); Obesity; Program Participation/Evaluation; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps) The effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on obesity have been the focus of much debate. However, causal interpretation of estimates from previous studies, comparing participants to non-participants, is complicated by endogeneity and possible misreporting of participation in SNAP. In this paper, we take a novel approach to examine quasi-experimental variation in SNAP benefit amount on adult obesity. Children of SNAP households qualify for free in-school meals, thus freeing some additional benefits for the household. A greater proportion of school-age children eligible for free in-school meals proxies for an exogenous increase in the amount of SNAP benefits available per adult. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 we show that school meals represent a non-trivial part of the food budget for SNAP households. We find that increases in SNAP benefits have no effect on obesity levels for the full sample of those who report SNAP participation. To better isolate the effects of additional benefits from other potential changes we restrict our analysis to adults living in households with at least one child under 5 years of age. In this setting, we find that additional SNAP benefits reduce BMI and the probability of being obese for SNAP adults.
	Bibliography Citation Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas and Rusty Tchernis. "Measuring Effects of SNAP on Obesity at the Intensive Margin." NBER Working Paper No. 22681, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2016.

4.	Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas Tchernis, Rusty
4.	Measuring Effects of SNAP on Obesity at the Intensive Margin Economics and Human Biology 31 (September 2018): 150-163. Also: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X17302253 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Elsevier Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Obesity; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps) The effects of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on obesity have been the focus of much debate. However, causal interpretation of estimates from previous studies, comparing participants to non-participants, is complicated by endogeneity and possible misreporting of participation in SNAP. In this paper, we take a novel approach to examine quasi-experimental variation in SNAP benefit amount on adult obesity. Children of SNAP households qualify for free in-school meals, thus freeing some additional benefits for the household. A greater proportion of school-age children eligible for free in-school meals proxies for an exogenous increase in the amount of SNAP benefits available per adult. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 we show that school meals represent a non-trivial part of the food budget for SNAP households. We find that increases in SNAP benefits have no effect on obesity levels for the full sample of those who report SNAP participation. To better isolate the effects of additional benefits from other potential changes we restrict our analysis to adults living in households with at least one child under 5 years of age. In this setting, we find that additional SNAP benefits reduce BMI and the probability of being obese for SNAP adults. Specifically, when one child in a household of four becomes school-aged, adult BMI is expected to decrease by 0.23 units and the probability of being obese decreases by 2.58 percentage points or by about 10%.
	Bibliography Citation Almada, Lorenzo Nicolas and Rusty Tchernis. "Measuring Effects of SNAP on Obesity at the Intensive Margin." Economics and Human Biology 31 (September 2018): 150-163.

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