Executive Summary. Staying Enrolled in CalFresh Helps Community College Students Stay in School

Nearly half of California community college students report struggling with food insecurity. SNAP food benefits (known as CalFresh in California) can help reduce student hunger. Alleviating hunger among students should lead to improved educational outcomes, but rigorous research on this topic remains scarce. Our recent study (The Impact of Nutrition Assistance on College Student Success) helps to close that gap, using a compelling matching design with large-scale data to measure the impact of CalFresh food benefits on college students’ educational outcomes.