SNAP Participation, Food Security, and Geographic Access to Food

This report examines SNAP households’ geographic access to food for two groups of households: those that recently entered the program, referred to as new-entrant households, and those that had participated in SNAP for about six to seven months, referred to as six-month households. It characterizes the retail food environment for new-entrant and six-month SNAP households and describes households’ food purchase behavior, including type of stores shopped at most frequently and distance and travel time to those stores. It also examines differences in the prevalence of food security and in the improvement of food security associated with SNAP based on households’ geographic access to food. All analyses separately consider households in urban and rural areas given their historical differences in demographic and economic characteristics.