Bridging the Gap: Student Access to SNAP Benefits During the Transition to College
The theme for the Association for Education Finance and Policy annual conference this year is: Fifty Years of Education Finance and Policy: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead
Huizhi Gong, a research associate at the California Policy Lab, will present at this conference about a new report focused on the extent to which high school seniors remain enrolled in CalFresh (California’s version of SNAP: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) when they transition to college. She is part of a panel titled: The Broader Educational Eco-System: Links Between Education and Food, the Environment, and Health.
Overview of report:
The transition from high school to early adulthood is a particularly challenging time to experience food insecurity. Students who previously had access to food benefits, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), in high school may have trouble retaining that support, particularly if they move away from home and must apply on their own. Special restrictions on college students’ access to SNAP may present another barrier. Connecting more eligible young people to public benefits during this vulnerable time may better equip them to succeed in college or early careers, but data limitations have previously hindered our understanding of eligibility and participation during this transition period.
This report provides new insights on participation in CalFresh during the final years of high school and the first few years post-high school, and the factors that influence whether students continue to receive benefits. In this report, we focus on the public high school graduating classes of 2015 – 2021.
The California Policy Lab partnered with California’s education and social services agencies to build a linked database of student-level administrative data on student enrollment, financial aid, and SNAP participation (called CalFresh in California) to make research on this topic possible.