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May 19, 2025
The Case for Shifting More Welfare Costs to States
As part of Congressional Republicans’ drive to craft “one big beautiful bill” reflecting Donald Trump’s tax and spending agenda, the House Agriculture committee on May 14 approved several proposals that would reduce federal spending by shifting some current federal welfare costs to states. At the same time, dissatisfied conservative members have called for more federal…
May 14, 2025
An Evaluation of Cost-Saving Reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Abstract Congress is considering ways to reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $230 billion over 10 years. Reforms will likely include one or more of the following cost-saving elements: reducing the maximum SNAP benefit, reducing deductions, expanding work requirements, and ending broad-based categorical eligibility. I analyze each of these reforms, focusing on the…
March 26, 2025
How Large Would SNAP Be? Simulating the Size of SNAP Based on Changes to the Unemployment Rate
Abstract The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a means-tested transfer program that is available to all households that meet the eligibility criteria. Therefore, SNAP is also a countercyclical program, meaning that the size of the program increases during recessionary periods and decreases during expansionary periods. A large literature quantifies the magnitude of the relationship…
March 11, 2025
An Evaluation of Cost Saving Reforms of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
AbstractCongress is considering ways to reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $230 billion over ten years. Reforms are likely to include one or more of the following cost-saving elements: reducing the maximum SNAP benefit, reducing deductions, expanding work requirements, and ending broad based categorical eligibility. In this paper I analyze each…
February 24, 2025
What Do You Call an Automatic Stabilizer that Doesn’t Shrink When Conditions Improve? The Biden Food Stamps Blowout
Last month the Wall Street Journal editorial board (“The Great Biden Welfare Blowout”) reviewed the staggering number of welfare recipients in key programs at the close of the Biden administration: Some 84.6 million individuals are enrolled in Medicaid—about a quarter of the population—roughly the same as when Mr. Biden entered office. About 42.6 million Americans…
December 5, 2024
SNAP and the “Make America Healthy Again” Agenda
President Trump has committed to “Make America Healthy Again.” Part of the solution will involve addressing issues within the federal government’s nutrition assistance programs. His nominees to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will play a pivotal role in advancing this agenda. Nearly six in 10 Americans…
May 22, 2024
Missed Opportunities in the Proposed Farm Bill
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson’s proposed Farm Bill reauthorization, The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024, heads to committee markup today. The Farm Bill is a tough reauthorization normally, and even more difficult in a tightly divided House. While there are provisions that would improve the program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) needs…
July 12, 2023
Employment in SNAP: Setting the Record Straight
Skeptics of work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) often argue that most families receiving SNAP benefits are already working. A recent NBCNews article, for example, claimed that four out of five SNAP households have at least one working person in the household, and that 10 percent had three or more workers in 2021,…
June 23, 2023
SNAP Can Improve Nutrition, Help Farmers, and Support the Environment
A headline in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year read, “America Is Binging on Snacks, and Food Companies Are Eating It Up.” The article explains how American diets that were already heavily reliant on snacks and packaged foods, have only gotten more so since the pandemic – to the tune of $181 billion in household snack purchases…
June 16, 2023
The Missing Context Behind “Cuts” in Fast-Growing Welfare Programs
Official Washington just completed a heated debate on the debt limit, punctuated by intense partisan differences over strengthening work requirements for key welfare programs. On one side stood House Republicans, who on April 26 approved legislation that would have strengthened work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents (dubbed “ABAWDs”) collecting major welfare benefits like food stamps and…