Scenario: Assume Household Qualifies, and Receives a SNAP Payment on an EBT

Scenario: Assume household qualifies, and receives a SNAP payment on an EBT card.• The SNAP-changed budget is not identical to a simple cash transfer. Extra SNAP income can only purchase food, and nothing else. When researchers analyzed this scenario with the consumer optimization model, the results indicated three outcomes: 1) infra-marginal, 2) extra-marginal, and 3) empirical. The most accurate description of these three outcomes can be stated as:

A) When empirical researchers observed actual SNAP recipients spending patterns, households spent less on food than the theoretical Infra-marginal or the Extra-Marginal cases predicted. These Results were expected.
B) When empirical researchers observed actual SNAP recipients spending patterns, households spent less on food than the theoretical Infra-marginal model and more on food than the Extra-Marginal case. These Results were troublesome.
C) When empirical researchers observed actual SNAP recipients spending patterns, households spent more on food than the theoretical Infra-marginal or the Extra-Marginal cases predicted. These Results were surprising but also important.
D) When empirical researchers observed actual SNAP recipients spending patterns, households spent more on food than the theoretical Infra-marginal model and less on food than the Extra-Marginal case. These Results were logically consistent with earlier findings.
E) None of the above.