The $1.8m grant in cooperative agreement awards will examine the performance of the Food Stamp Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and Child Nutrition Programs.
The research, which will be conducted in eight states, is designed to help ensure access to healthy diets for all Americans, according to the nation's Deputy Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner.
All of the research projects are awarded by the Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program (FANRP), administered by USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS). They aim to determine the impact of economic incentives in food assistance programs, food choices and obesity.
The largest grant within the new initiative - $267,000 - will be awarded to Washington's Urban Institute, which will examine whether the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) is still "an acceptable alternative" to Food Stamps.
In the study, the FDPIR, which has been an alternative to the Food Stamp Program since 1977, will be compared to the Food Stamp Program with regard to eligibility, participation, administration, and possible effects on health and nutrition.
A further $240,000 will go to Mathematica Policy Research in Pronceton, New Jersey, in an effort to examine the effects of participation in the Natioanl School Lunch and Breakfast programs on childhood obesity.
Key factors that will be examined include students' dietary behaviors, such as their consumption of beverages, high caloric foods and fruits and vegetables. According to the USDA, this research will shed light on the overall effect of school meal participation on obesity as well as distinguish the roles of the food environment both within and outside of school.
In the same vein, a further $235,000 will be used by the Urban Institute to examine the effect of participation in the Food Stamp Program and the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs on child weight using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 and a range of econometric approaches.
In particular, the study will examine participation in food assistance programs and its effects on food intake and food security and their subsequent effects on child weight, said the government agency.
Some $180,000 will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of WIC on maternal behavior, health and birth outcomes.
Other grants will be used to examine: economic survival strategies of low-income families, including under what circumstances these families use the Food Stamp Program; effects of potential changes to state and federal asset eligibility policies for the Food Stamp Program; relationships of certification error rates in the Food Stamp Program to state program policies, caseload characteristics, economic conditions, and expenditures on certification-related activities; and relationships between local food environment, household food insecurity, and obesity.
"Over the course of a year, USDA's food assistance and nutrition programs directly touch the lives of one in five Americans by providing children and low-income families access to nutritional food. This research will help ensure access to healthy diets for all Americans," said Conner.