1/1/2024 0 Comments Sick junk banA 2016 USDA study found that 9.3 percent of the average SNAP household’s grocery bill is spent on “sweetened beverages” like soda and pop (the number was 7.1 percent for non-SNAP households). Much of the discussion around SNAP in recent years has revolved around the nutritional value of the food being purchased with SNAP funds, and for good reason. In 2018 the average monthly benefit for a SNAP participant was $125, though this number has increased in recent years due to the aforementioned policy changes. SNAP participants are allowed to buy almost any foods and beverages they want with the funds, with the main exceptions being alcoholic beverages, vitamins, and hot foods (such as fast food). Other eligibility criteria include things like work requirements, though there are exceptions for certain groups such as students, those caring for children, and the elderly. The main eligibility requirement for SNAP benefits is that a household must have an income below 130 percent of the federal poverty level ( $32,000 for a family of three). Participation in the program has been growing steadily in recent years, from 17.2 million Americans in 2000 to 41.2 million in 2022-which is about 12.5 percent of the US population (or 1 in 8 people). To the first point, SNAP is a federal nutrition assistance program administered by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) that provides funds to low-income households to help them buy groceries. With costs reaching unprecedented levels, it’s worth taking some time to understand what exactly this program does and what people have been saying about it in recent years. Congress finally ended these payments in the FY 2023 omnibus bill, but various other policy changes are setting the stage to make $100 billion+ levels of SNAP spending the new normal. One pandemic-related change was the introduction of SNAP emergency allotments, which allowed all households to receive the maximum benefit allowed. However, actions since the pandemic have increased SNAP expenditures well beyond caseload increases, with considerable effect.” As Angela Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute explains, “SNAP was already on an increasing trajectory stemming from years of policy changes that relaxed eligibility and increased program take-up. The causes of these increasing costs largely trace back to policy changes. And for 2023, Congress has generously provided $153.8 billion for the program, roughly double what was spent just 5 years ago. In 2021 SNAP costs soared to $113.7 billion, by far the highest in the program’s history. And when the pandemic hit, all bets were off. In the following years spending on the program continued to increase, and by 2010-2019 annual expenditures were hovering around $70 billion per year. That’s a lot more than the $9.2 billion spent on the program in 1980-even after adjusting for inflation-but with population changes and such, perhaps one could argue that doubling the spending over two decades was reasonable.īut the growth in SNAP spending hardly stopped there. All annual costs that follow are for fiscal years). The costs have been slowly ballooning ever since the program’s inception in 1961, but due to a variety of policies and economic factors that arose during the pandemic, SNAP spending is rapidly escalating.įor context, SNAP expenditures in fiscal year 2000 totaled $17 billion (FY 2000 was Oct. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)-more commonly known as food stamps-has seen sharply rising costs in recent years.
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