The Effect of Emergency Financial Assistance on Mobility, SNAP Receipt, and Presence of Dependents

This paper studies emergency financial assistance for people at risk of homelessness using federal tax and census data. We use an established quasi-experimental research design to examine how assistance affects address histories, number of children, and receipt of food benefits (SNAP) in Illinois. We find no evidence that assistance affects moves or children, but we observe a small increase in SNAP uptake among the lowest-income callers. We consider whether prior studies that limit focus to local geography estimate treatment effects with bias; we find that limiting outcomes to Illinois does not noticeably change observed treatment effects.