CONVERT FOOD STAMPS TO CASH FOR THE NEEDY.

Byline: GARY M. GALLES

SUPERVISOR Michael D. Antonovich plans to launch an investigation into food-stamp fraud in Los Angeles County, amid charges that the welfare system exacerbates fraud by inadequately verifying recipient eligibility. Given the history of problems in California's food-stamp program, an investigation may be warranted.

However, overlooked will be an even more basic issue: To help recipients more, food stamps should be converted to cash assistance.

Converting to cash assistance would lower administrative costs and raise participation rates among the eligible population. It would benefit each recipient more, and reach more low-income families as well. But the greater choice it gives recipients triggers fears they would spend less on food, substituting ``evil'' alternatives such as alcohol, drugs, etc. However, that concern is inconsistent with both theory and evidence.

Food stamps are already equivalent to cash for almost all recipients, because they would purchase more food than their food stamp allotments, even if given cash. Other than higher administrative costs, the result is the same as giving them money.

The maximum food stamp benefit is about $1 per meal per person, with still less going to those with higher incomes among the eligible population. Few of those families would have spent less on food. So, for the vast majority, food stamps simply replace money that would have been spent on food, freeing that money to spend however they choose. If that desired spending is for alcohol, food stamps do not prevent it.

Even for the few families for which food stamps might raise food expenditures compared with cash, the argument for giving aid as food stamps is weak.

The main argument is that poor families cannot afford adequate diets, so we must subsidize their food. But studies find little difference between the nutritional adequacy of the diets of low- and high-income families. Added food spending also often fails to improve nutrition, as less nutritious preprepared food is substituted for healthier home-prepared food. Further, obesity is a more common problem among low-income families today than lack of food.

Even more important is that the same argument is used to justify subsidizing housing, education, transportation, medical care, etc., for the poor. In each case, advocates say aid must be given in-kind, because poor recipients would waste cash on less important goods. But those categories make up the vast majority of low-income family budgets.

If a family needs subsidies in all these areas, the problem is lack of income, not too little food, transportation, or housing.

Converting to cash would also improve measures of the well-being of the poor. Unlike cash assistance, the billions spent on in-kind programs, such as food stamps, are omitted in official income statistics, so the data dramatically overstate their poverty, and misstate what is already being done for them.

Food is no more special than housing, education, etc. And there is little evidence that poor families ``waste'' large amounts of cash. If we really believe in aiding those with low incomes, it is time we trusted them to love their families at least as much as the government does, and give them that aid in cash. Welfare fraud will still need combating. But the program would benefit recipients more, at lower cost to taxpayers, than what we do today.