Close to a million people in the United States may lose food stamps benefits across the country as states reinstate time limits and work requirements that had been waived in the immediate aftermath of the economic downturn in 2008. About 45 million people currently receive benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as the food stamps program is now called. Unemployed childless adults with low incomes are likely to lose these benefits, starting this month, based on the 1996 Welfare Reform Law which imposes time limits and work requirements in order to receive safety net features like food assistance.
Food policy experts have stated that the time limits regulation will be in effect this year in more than 40 states that represent about 65 percent of the United States population; however, states like West Virginia, New Mexico, and Mississippi may still qualify for time waivers on the basis of high and persistent unemployment.
About 14 percent or 17.4 million households in the U.S. are food insecure, meaning that heads of these households lack the resources to provide enough food for all their family members. In families with incomes near or below the federal poverty line, or those with children headed by single women or single men, single women living alone, or Black- and Hispanic-headed households, food insecurity is substantially higher than the national average. Almost 16 million children have been identified living in households without adequate and nutritious food to feed its members every day.
Research has shown that providing benefits through government safety net programs have been the key to decreasing poverty rates over the last five decades. Food stamps, a topic that has been the subject of acrimonious partisan debates, has helped lift almost 4 million people above the established poverty line. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s own Economic Research Service has found that “every $5 in new SNAP benefits generates as much as $9 of economic activity.” Increased SNAP benefits have a “multiplier effect” on the economy; SNAP benefits lead to consumption expenditures that increase the economic activity by the producers of the goods and services being purchased, on the transportation system that delivers the goods and services, and so on.
Cutting food assistance programs is short-sighted. It will only exacerbate the already-unacceptable levels of poverty and inequality in the U.S.
Shyama Venkateswar is Director of the Public Policy Program at Roosevelt House and Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College. In this capacity, she leads the Public Policy Program’s undergraduate curriculum, teaches the senior Capstone Seminar, co-manages faculty initiatives, works closely with city & state agencies for student internships, manages adjuncts, and directs a scholars program funded by the Jewish Foundation for Education of Women. She is a regular columnist for Roosevelt House’s website on a variety of national and global policy issues on conflict resolution, food security, women’s leadership, criminal justice reform, among others. She has almost twenty years of experience in research, policy and advocacy focusing on social justice issues, both in the U.S. and globally. Before coming to Hunter College, she worked at the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW), where she served as Director of Research & Programs, and helped provide the vision and strategic direction for the Council’s policy agenda on economic security for low-income women, diversity in higher education and the corporate arena, women’s leadership, and ending global violence against women. She is co-author of two NCRW reports, Caring for Our Nation’s Future; and The Challenge and the Charge: Strategies for Retaining and Advancing Women of Color in addition to numerous commentary and opinion pieces on poverty, job creation, peace-building, and immigrant rights published in The Miami Herald, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Asia Times, The Indian Express, and the Chicago Sun-Times. She has given Congressional briefings, and presented her research findings to academic, policy, advocacy and corporate audiences. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and is a graduate of Smith College.
