Craig Gundersen

Professional Summary

Craig Gundersen is the Snee Family Endowed Chair and a Professor in the Department of Economics at Baylor University. Prior to joining Baylor, he was ACES Distinguished Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at University of Illinois and, before that, he had positions at Iowa State University and USDA, Economic Research Service. Gundersen is the creator of Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap project, a Round Table Fellow of the Farm Foundation, and a Faculty Affiliate of the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at the University of Notre Dame. Gundersen is a Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA).

For almost 30 years, Gundersen’s research has concentrated on the causes and consequences of food insecurity and on the evaluation of food assistance programs, with an emphasis on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program). In terms of the causes of food insecurity, his work has included, for example, examinations of the multi-generational households, American Indians, and food bank clients. Of particular note is his invention of Map the Meal Gap which has become the standard tool to portray the geography of food insecurity in the U.S. He also has the two most cited review papers in this area (Gundersen, Kreider, and Pepper, 2011; Gundersen and Ziliak, 2018) with the former recognized as the Outstanding Paper in the 2011 volume of AEPP. In terms of the consequences of food insecurity, his work has concentrated on dispelling myths of the connection between food insecurity and obesity, on the myriad negative health outcomes of food insecurity among seniors, and on the impacts of food insecurity on mortality and health care costs. He also has the most cited review paper on the consequences of food insecurity (Gundersen and Ziliak, 2015). With respect to his work evaluating food assistance programs, his work was the first to show that, after controlling for non-random selection into SNAP, recipients are less likely to be food insecure than eligible non-recipients. This result was verified in further papers he co-authored including ones that also addressed misreporting of SNAP receipt. 

Gundersen’s research has been published in top journals across a number of fields including in ag economics (e.g., AEPP, Food Policy, American Journal of Agricultural Economics), economics (e.g., Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Health Economics), statistics (e.g., Journal of the American Statistical Association), nutrition (e.g., Journal of Nutrition), and medicine (e.g., New England Journal of Medicine, Canadian Medical Association Journal). His research has been funded by over $25 million in external funding from over 30 grants. These funds have come from several sources including the National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Economic Research Service (ERS), Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), and Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR). The stature of his research and the importance of the topics he pursues has led Gundersen to be appear frequently in the media and in presentations to policymakers and program administrators.

Education

• 1996 – Ph.D., Economics, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, California
• 1990 – BA, Economics University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana

Courses

• ECO 3390 - World Food Economy

Research Interests

• Food insecurity
• Food assistance programs

Selected Publications

• Gundersen, C. (2025) Promoting dignity and autonomy in NSLP and WIC: Lessons learned from the success of SNAP. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 47(1), 80-96. 2025.
• Wei, M. & Gundersen, C. (2025) Ascertaining who is eligible for SNAP: Are we using the correct metric? Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association 4, 54–69. 2025.
• Gundersen, C. (2024) A reconsideration of food insecurity trends in the United States. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 46(4), 1286–1300. 2024.
• Gundersen, C. (2021). A proposal to reconstruct the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) into a universal basic income program for food. Food Policy, 101, 102096.
• Gundersen, C., & Ziliak, J. (2018). Food insecurity research in the United States: Where we have been and where we need to go. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 40(1), 119-135.
• Gundersen, C., Kreider, B., & Pepper, J. (2017). Partial identification methods for evaluating food assistance programs: A case study of the causal impact of SNAP on food insecurity. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 99(4), 875-894.
• Gundersen, C., & Ziliak, J. (2015). Food insecurity and health outcomes. Health Affairs, 34(11), 1830-1839.