Background Information

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (formerly labeled food stamps, and often still referred to as such), is an American federal food assistance program that provides credits to people that may be used to purchase food items. Funding for the program is covered fully by the federal government, though states are responsible for administering the program, and for some of the administration costs. The program was expanded, starting in the spring of 2020, in order to address increased food insecurity brought on by COVID-19. These pandemic-era expansions of the program have illuminated significant debate about the future direction of the program. 

Some have placed emphasis on maximizing SNAP’s ability to combat food insecurity, while others have expressed concerns about ensuring that the program does not overly disincentivize work or contribute to a lack of self-sufficiency. Pandemic-era expansions of SNAP in 2020 and 2021 have added fuel to these questions on both sides of the policy discussion, although these debates have been around for decades. 

At the program’s inception in 1939, and its second iteration in the early 1960s, food stamp recipients were required to purchase stamps equaling their normal food expenditure, and would receive, in the form of the stamps, the ability to purchase more food than they would normally have been able to purchase with that sum. Some criticized the requirement, arguing that it placed limits on participation, and it was removed by the Food and Agriculture Act of 1977, leading to an increase in participation.The act also established more regulation on the availability of food stamps. For example, it included a penalty for stamp recipients who voluntarily quit their jobs without good cause. This penalty has persisted in SNAP’s general work requirement. Those who do not meet the work requirements can be suspended from the SNAP program for a month or more.

COVID-19 Pandemic Era Expansions

The pandemic-era relief packages passed by Congress included the following changes:

• A temporary 15% increase in all SNAP benefits, which went into effect in late 2020 and expired in 2021; 
• Emergency Allotments (EAs), which are increases in SNAP benefits that raised the amount received by every recipient to the maximum or higher, and have been maintained in some states and expired in others; 
• and the partial suspension of the Able Bodied Americans Without Dependents (ABAWD) work requirement. The ABAWD work requirement is aimed at Americans who do not have dependents and are considered able-bodied. Those who are subject to this requirement must complete at least 80 hours of work or work training per month.

While all of these measures have technically been temporary, there was also a permanent increase in SNAP’s maximum allotment in 2021 through a program called the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP). The re-evaluation of the TFP was mandated by the 2018 Farm Bill, which required that the TFP be reassessed to be better representative of the cost of a healthy diet. The TFP re-evaluation raised the maximum allotment by 21%, though other publications have pegged the increase at over 25%, perhaps due to differences in calculation.

Concerns about SNAP’s impact on employment and self-sufficiency

The employment-incentive-focused side of the SNAP debate is most contentious when discussing the TFP permanent increase in the maximum allotment, and the temporary and partial suspension of the ABAWD work requirement. One element of controversy are discretionary exemptions, which allow states to exempt one ABAWD from the ABAWD work requirements for a month. States receive a limited number of exemptions, and these can be carried over into subsequent fiscal years. It has been argued that as the current suspension of the ABAWD work requirement makes the use of these discretionary exemptions redundant, states will store up their discretionary exemptions and, once the national public health emergency declaration has ended, use them to exempt a high number of ABAWDs.

SNAP work disincentives have been alleged to contribute to a host of negative outcomes, including interfering with economic recovery, and contributing to a shortage of labor. One study published in Labour Economics found that access to SNAP decreased the rate at which single women were employed by 6%, and caused married men to reduce the hours they worked by 5%. 

Concerns about increasing food security

However, other studies report contrary results. Another study from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management found that SNAP increased the labor participation of participants by around 5%, and increased their yearly hours worked by 47 hours per year. They attributed this mostly to the ABAWD work requirement and reason that it increases workforce participation.

Additionally, it has been argued that SNAP’s benefits structure is designed to reduce the work disincentives that some allege emerge when recipients of welfare benefits lose those benefits as a result of increases in income. Because SNAP is designed to gradually reduce benefits with rises in income, and includes an income deduction that further reduces the amount of benefits that are lost with increases in income, there is less risk of SNAP participants being dissuaded from working for fear of an abrupt loss of benefits. There is an income threshold, past which SNAP recipients will lose SNAP benefits, but because of this gradual reduction in benefits, the loss is not a large one.

A vocal group of supporters of SNAP are calling for extended or permanent expansions of the SNAP benefits that were implemented in the early months of the pandemic. This perspective praises the TFP permanent increase in the maximum allotment, as well as the temporary suspension of the ABAWD work requirement, as providing a necessary increase in the program’s ability to improve the food security of recipients. The program has been shown to have a significant impact on food insecurity—it brings down overall food insecurity by as much as 30%—but the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy-research think-tank, found that before the TFP increase, the average maximum SNAP allotment (which varies based on household size), covered the cost of a modestly priced meal in 4% of the counties in the contiguous United States. The study found that after the increase, the average maximum SNAP allotment covered the cost of a modestly priced meal in 79% of US counties. Some posit that this is still insufficient, and that more should be done to combat food insecurity. 

Others suggest making the suspension of the ABAWD work requirement permanent. They believe it causes significant harm by taking benefits away from ABAWD SNAP recipients who may be working part time with irregular hours, or facing significant barriers to work and therefore cannot meet the requirement. 

It has also been argued that available research shows the requirements do not have a meaningful impact on employment. A recent report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) analyzed nine states and found that the ABAWD work requirement reduced SNAP enrollment. The amount of reduction varied based on the state, from a 5% decrease in some Colorado counties to a 41% decrease in Vermont. However, the study found that a large portion of those subject to the ABAWD work requirement were found to be unemployed four quarters after the requirement was implemented. This contradicts the findings of previously mentioned studies and demonstrates a large potential for future research on the subject. 

The pandemic era expansions of SNAP have illuminated one of the policy debates that has guided the program since its beginning: differing ideas about what recipients should have to do in order to receive SNAP, and how much they should receive. The core of the debate is grounded in differing ideas about the role that government should play in providing resources to citizens to help people better support themselves. This debate will continue to drive the development of future discussions around SNAP.