Academia took a break from shopping at Whole Foods and World Market to conduct the study.
Via WISTV
When people get their food stamp benefits on the weekend, the sale of beer rises among by as much as 7 percent by those people who receive the benefits — that’s the conclusion of a study conducted by several professors at the University of South Carolina Darla Moore School of Business and the University of Connecticut.
The study, called One More Saturday Night: Food Stamp Timing and Monthly Consumption Patterns, was done to “examine the relationship between the timing of food stamp receipt and consumption patterns.” John M. Gordainer and Orgula D. Ozturk were the USC researchers who worked with two colleagues from the University of Connecticut Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics on the study.
“Lots of people have looked at the timing of the distribution of food stamps and shopping behaviors,” Gordainer explains why they investigated this subject. “But we saw something strange with the shopping behavior on the weekends.”
The study found “purchases of beer are higher in months where food stamps are distributed on a Saturday or Sunday than in months where benefits are distributed during the week in food stamp eligible households.”[…]
Beer and tobacco products cannot be purchased with food stamps. The study found that when the SNAP distribution days occurred on the weekend, alcohol purchases increased for the entire month.
“For non-eligible households we see no such spikes in purchases,” it said.
The researchers also found the person doing the shopping on weekends when benefits are distributed is different from the person who does the household shopping if the benefits come during the week, which also led to the increase in beer purchases.
“I don’t think we’re saying food stamps cause people to buy more beer,” Gordainer said. “We’re saying the timing of the food stamp distribution causes people to buy more beer.”