Employment plays a crucial role in helping families escape poverty and move up the income ladder. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, created through welfare reform in 1996, showed that linking government assistance to work could increase employment and decrease poverty among single-mother families.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, also contains a work requirement. In this report, Badger Institute Visiting Fellow Angela Rachidi explores how its usefulness has been blunted.

 Able-bodied adults without dependent children — abbreviated as ABAWDs — can receive SNAP benefits for only three months in a three-year period unless they worked or participated in a work-like activity for 80 hours on average per month.

This requirement, however, has been far from absolute. Federal lawmakers allowed states to waive it in certain circumstances, and Wisconsin officials have done so much of the time.

The result has been higher FoodShare caseloads and expenditures, likely leading to less employment and more government dependency.