Healthcare and Hunger: Effects of the ACA Medicaid Expansions on Food Insecurity in America

I analyze the impact of the ACA Medicaid expansions on food hardship in US households. Utilizing cross‐state, over time variation in Medicaid expansion, I find the ACA expansions reduced the probability a low‐income household is low food secure by between 2.3 and 3.9 percentage points, is very low food secure by between 2.7 and 4.6percentage points, and is food insecure by 6.5 percentage points. The results are robust to a variety of definitions of food hardship, model specifications, and definitions of Medicaid expansion.