The interactive effects of housing assistance and food stamps on food spending

Few studies have examined how housing assistance affects recipients’ well-being and none has examined how participation in other public assistance programs alters these effects. Yet there is considerable overlap between programs and measuring how different program combinations differentially affect well-being is critical to evaluating them. This paper uses a unique dataset, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with housing assistance recipients identified through address-matches, to take an initial, very exploratory look at whether housing assistance differentially affects one marker of well-being, food expenditures, for food stamp recipients versus non-recipients. The numerous theoretical and empirical challenges confronting such research are discussed and a novel approach for addressing these challenges is developed.