Replication Package for Automatic Nutritional Stabilizers and the Role of Charitable Food Assistance During Times of Crisis

By: Denvil Duncan, Luis Navarro, Shellye Suttles Code by: Luis Navarro Latest Update: July 2024

Abstract We examine the role of charitable food assistance during periods of economic distress by looking at donations to a large Midwestern food bank. First, we explore the historical determinants of in-kind food and financial donations, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that both in-kind and financial donations dramatically increased at the onset of the pandemic but these increases were not persistent. As a result, we argue that this is evidence of the charitable food system serving as an "automatic nutritional stabilizer" in accepting federal provisions and charitable donations on behalf of households in need during times of crisis.

Folder Structure:

• build/ contains the scripts to clean and prepare the data.
• analysis/ contains the scripts to replicate the figures and tables.

For any questions and comments reach me at: lunavarr@iu.edu