Food Stamp Program Certification Costs and Errors, 1989-2005: Final Report
By Christopher Logan, Ryan Kling, William Rhodes. ERS project representative: Kenneth Hanson
Contractor and Cooperator Report No. (CCR-45) 118 pp,
June 2008
Preventing and detecting certification errors in the Food Stamp Program (FSP) is a major
policy concern. In 2005, the cost of overpayments was $1.29 billion, about 4.5 percent
of the $28.6 billion in benefits issued. This report examines the State-level relationships
between FSP certification error rates and certification expenditures, program policies,
caseload characteristics, and economic conditions. The results show that, during the
study period of 1989-2005, a 10-percent increase in certification “effort”—about $35 per
participating household—would reduce an index of certification errors by 2 percent
(0.3 percentage points out of a mean of 15.1 percent). The effect of certification effort
was significantly smaller between 1997 and 2002, when States were implementing
welfare reform. Key simplification policies authorized by the 2002 Farm Bill were
estimated to jointly reduce the error index by 4.4 percentage points.
Disclaimer: This study was conducted by Abt Associates Inc. under Research Agreement No. 59-5000-6-0078 with the Economic Research Service. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of ERS or USDA.
Keywords: Food Stamp Program, State certification costs, State error rates, Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program, FANRP, ERS, USDA
In this report ... Chapters are
in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.
Data files and documentation for this report are available upon request from Kenneth Hanson at khanson@ers.usda.gov
Updated date: June 20, 2008
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