Upcoming research on food stamps, food spending, and household food security

USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) recently announced its food assistance research grants for fiscal year 2005. These eight projects will study many topics in food and nutrition assistance, including: the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (Kenneth Finegold at the Urban Institute), recertification policies and Food Stamp Program participation dynamics using administrative data from South Carolina (David Ribar at the George Washington University), the effective tax rates on cash income induced by Food Stamp Program regulations (Jim Ziliak at the University of Kentucky), and a study of how food stamps affect food spending in grocery stores and restaurants, and how food spending in turn affects household food security (Parke Wilde at the Friedman School at Tufts University -- hooooray!). I'll give you an update in several months.