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A National-Level Study of Food Stamp Program Participation among American Indians: 1988-2004

The economic status of American Indians is substantially worse than that of the general population in the United States. For example, per-capita incomes are 40 percent below national averages (Leichenko, 2003), and large numbers of American Indians have earnings in the lower end of the income distribution (Gregory et al., 1997). These economic hardships are also reflected in the lower average incomes in counties with a high proportion of American Indians (Leichenko, 2003, Table 2). These economic hardships are correlated with a slew of negative consequences including food insecurity, food insecurity with hunger, high rates of obesity, high prevalences of diabetes, high rates of tooth decay, and low rates of breastfeeding. For example, one-in-five American Indians were food insecure in 2003 in comparison to about one-in-eight for the entire population and the rates of food insecurity with hunger were twice as high for American Indians (Gundersen, 2006). Current efforts to address these negative consequences associated with these resource-constrained food problems include several food assistance programs. The focus of this paper is on the Food Stamp Program. In 2003, 23.9 million low-income Americans received food stamps resulting in 24.6 billion dollars in benefits. Given the high poverty rates among American Indians, a large proportion of American Indians would be eligible for food stamps and presumably would benefit from their receipt. In light of the importance of food stamps, understanding the food stamp usage by American Indians viz. the general population seems relevant. This paper represents the first examination of food stamp use among American Indians at the national level. We first consider how the participation rates among American Indians in the Food Stamp Program compares to the general population? To do so, we use data from the 2 1989 to 2004 March Supplements of the Current Population Survey (CPS). We establish the food stamp participation rate (i.e., the number of food stamp households divided by the number of eligible households) for each of these years. The use of multiple years allows us to ascertain how the participation rate may have changed over time. The CPS has been used extensively in other research on the Food Stamp Program. We next consider whether, after controlling for other factors, if American Indians have higher rates food stamp participation than the rest of the population. Given the serious economic challenges facing many American Indians, we would expect higher participation rates among American Indians in comparison …