Using American Community Survey Data to Expand Access to the School Meals Programs (2012) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix B: Estimates of Eligible Students Using the American Community Survey
Appendix B: Estimates of Eligible Students Using the American Community Survey
Pages 235-263
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how to account for categorical eligibility using ACS variables. This appendix addresses issues associated with using the ACS to estimate the eligibility of students who live in households, the bulk of all public school students.
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. Namely, a "student" is a person with the following responses2 to the ACS questions shown in Boxes B-1, B-2, and B-33: · yes, attended public school or public college at some time during the past 3 months, · highest degree or level of school completed reported as "No schooling" or "Nursery or preschool through 12 grades," and · age reported to be less than 20 years old.4 DEFINING INCOME According to the Eligibility Manual for School Meals, U.S.
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For example: strike benefits and workers compensation are not specifically mentioned in ACS questions, although they could be included under "any other sources of income"; railroad retirement is not specifically mentioned in the school meals definition,
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but is most likely reported under "retirement income"; annuities are not specifically mentioned in ACS questions, although they are likely to be included under "retirement, survivor, or disability pensions"; investment income is not specifically mentioned in ACS questions, although it could be included under income question items "interest, dividends, etc." or "any other sources of income"; any other money that may be available to pay for children's meals and regular contributions from persons not living in house
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hold are not specifically mentioned in ACS questions, although they could be included under "any other sources of income"; and cash withdrawn from savings is not specifically mentioned in ACS questions and is not traditionally considered to be "income." The panel concluded that the ACS and school meals definitions of income are sufficiently close that the ACS income definition is suitable for estimating income eligibility for the school meals programs. Nonetheless, it is important to understand the time periods to which ACS income data pertain.
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Income includes but is not limited to: · Earnings from work -- Wages, salaries, tips, commissions -- Net income from self-employed business and farms -- Strike benefits, unemployment compensation, and workers compensation · Welfare/child support/alimony -- Public assistance payments/welfare payments (TANF, General Assistance, General Relief, etc.) -- Alimony or child support payments · Retirement/disability payments -- Pensions, retirement income, veteran's benefits -- Social security -- Supplemental security income -- Disability benefits · Any other income -- Net rental income, annuities, net royalties -- Interest; dividend income -- Cash withdrawn from savings; income from estates, trusts, and/or invest ments -- Regular contributions from persons not living in the household -- Any other money that may be available to pay for the child(ren)
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This will be more even pronounced for the 3-year and 5-year ACS estimates than for the 1-year ACS estimates. In the school meals programs, the income information currently used to determine eligibility is reported on applications submitted to school districts.
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242 USING ACS DATA TO EXPAND ACCESS TO THE SCHOOL MEALS PROGRAMS BOX B-5 ACS Questions About Income 47.
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Any public assistance or welfare payments from the state or local welfare office.
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This definition of the economic unit does not explicitly raise the possibility of multiple units living within the household and is consistent with the Census Bureau's definition of households -- all persons living in the same residence. While the application instructions do not mention "economic units," knowledgeable individuals who attended panel meetings noted that if applicants for the school meals programs believe there are multiple economic units in their household, they can make that argument with local school meals officials.10 Some panel members wondered whether such beliefs might be reflected on the submitted applications, with some families not including the income of persons who live in the same housing unit but whom they consider not to be part of their household.
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were assumed to be members of the same economic unit. The remaining question for the panel was whether to assign unrelated individuals, particularly unmarried partners of the householder and unrelated children, to this economic unit or to other economic units within the household.
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The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 defines foster children whose care and placement are the responsibility of an agency that administers a State Plan or whom a court has placed with a caretaker household to be categorically eligible for school meals. Accordingly, the panel counted all foster children as eligible for free meals in the school meals programs and did not count them among the members of the foster household.13 The panel also chose to include an individual reported as an "unmarried partner" as a member of the economic unit consisting of indi viduals related to the householder.14 Although an individual declared to be the 13Excluding foster children from a household when determining eligibility was consistent with guidelines in place at the time the panel developed its specifications.
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Table B-2 shows estimates of eligibility for school meals for related children in the United States based on the addition of various types of "unrelated people" to the economic unit that includes the core family. The table shows only estimates for related students to illustrate the impact of various definitions of the primary economic unit on eligibility for the same group of students.
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of unrelated children live in households with no unrelated adults,15 except perhaps for an unmarried partner. On the other hand, 26.2 percent live in households with unrelated adults and no unmarried partner, while only 3.7 percent live in a household with both an unmarried partner and other unrelated adults.
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are considered separate economic units of size one, they were removed from the rest of the household prior to the analysis.16 The five definitions described in Table B-5 and Box B-7 reflect different ways of splitting household members into three types of economic units: the primary economic unit that includes the core family, a secondary economic unit consisting of unrelated individuals, and/or assignment of unrelated individuals to economic units of size one. Table B-5 shows how the five economic unit definitions -- denoted by EU1, EU2, .
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. With EU1 and EU3, all unrelated individuals who are not part of the primary economic unit are assumed to be economic units of size one; if they are children, these individuals are assumed to be eligible for free meals.
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defini tions that ask applicants to "include all children living with you." EU3 and EU4 reflect different ways of treating the unrelated children that live in households with other unrelated adults. EU3 makes all such children eligible for free meals, and EU4 makes them part of a separate economic unit that includes all unrelated individuals.
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EU3 places all such unrelated children in separate economic units of size one, while EU4 places all unrelated individuals in such households in a separate secondary economic unit independent of the householder's economic unit. EU5 considers all residents of the household, both related and unrelated, as a single economic unit.
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participates in certain means-tested public assistance programs targeting the low-income population. Specifically, students are categorically eligible for free meals if their families receive assistance from SNAP, TANF, or FDPIR.
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students who are categorically eligible for school meals because someone in the household receives SNAP benefits, or if someone in the economic unit receives public assistance income. While the latter might include income from programs that do not provide categorical eligibility (hence over-counting eligibility)
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income eligibility plus categorical eligibility for free meals based on receipt of SNAP benefits or public assistance income by anyone in the household. Consideration of SNAP benefits increases the percentage eligible for free meals by more than 5 percentage points under both EU4 and EU5, and accounting for both SNAP benefits and public assistance income increases the percentage eligible for free meals by about 6 percentage points.
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MULTIPLE ECONOMIC UNITS AMONG RELATED INDIVIDUALS To the extent that subfamilies (that are related to the householder) might have been considered separate economic units when they applied for school meals, pooling all related individuals into an economic unit could result in subfamily member children being less likely to be considered income eligible for school meals.
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The challenge is that in this analysis all subfamilies were considered to be separate economic units. It is more likely that only some subfamilies are actually independent economic units, and the ACS provides no information on when individuals share resources.
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FIGB-1.eps Percentage Eligible for Free and Reduced-Price Meals 80 60 40 20 0 1 2 3 4 5 Economic Unit Definition: EU1-EU5 FIGURE B-2 Impact of alternative economic unit definitions by school district. SOURCE: Prepared by the panel.FIGB-2.eps
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The Impact of Allowing More Than One Economic Unit in the Household The difference between the fourth and fifth definition of the economic unit reflects the assumption of allowing the household (less foster children) to reflect the presence of a second economic unit among unrelated individuals: EU5 defines the economic unit as the whole household, while EU4 allows for the possibility of two economic units (the family and unrelated individuals)
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Accounting for categorical eligibility reduces the difference in eligibility rates between EU4 and EU5. The sensitivity analysis of multiple economic units among related individuals (the subfamily analysis)
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As expected, the variation in impacts is much higher at the school district level. 23In at least one example, eligibility went down because the student was in a subfamily, but the head of household had public assistance income that had qualified the student for categorical eligibility under EU4 or EU5.
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elig.-EU5 FIGURE B-5 Impact of categorical eligibility at the state level with EU4 and EU5 (EUX with categorical eligibility-EUX)
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EU4 will assign the unrelated children to the other unrelated adults to form a secondary economic unit when they may really be children of the unmarried partner and should be assigned to the primary family. A second type of error is the aggregation of all unrelated adults and children into a single secondary economic unit when more than one secondary unit should be formed.
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