COSM’s commentary page is home to timely analysis of pressing topics.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly called food stamps) is an important safety-net program that helps reduce hunger and decrease poverty among US households. At the same time, SNAP has significant flaws that make it inefficient, less effective than it could be, and in some cases harmful to upward…
January 13, 2026 | By Angela Rachidi
My AEI colleague Mark Warshawsky recently wrote an excellent summary of policy reasons not to extend the COVID-era enhanced ACA subsidies. His explainer adds to a substantial body of work (examples here, here, and here) describing the policy problems with the enhanced subsidies, notwithstanding their largely positive treatment in the…
December 23, 2025 | By Angela Rachidi
Numerous reviewers have spotlighted shocking welfare fraud perpetrated by members of the Somali community in Minnesota. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel (“The Lesson of Minnesota’s Fraud”) recently described how “Somali fraudsters bilked taxpayers out of more than $1 billion” while arguing the policy lessons extend well beyond…
December 23, 2025 | By Matt Weidinger
When President Trump tapped J.D. Vance as his pick for Vice President, it seemed likely that the second Trump administration would place special emphasis on family policy. Prior to his political career, Vance highlighted fertility decline as a core issue. As a politician, Vance continued to emphasize fertility and family…
December 11, 2025 | By Vanessa Brown Calder
Everyone wants poor families to work their way off welfare and ascend the income ladder. Yet an increasing number remain trapped on government benefits, struggling to support themselves. Some blame the recipients, politicians, the economy, racism, or even capitalism. But few focus on perhaps the most obvious factor – government…
December 2, 2025 | By Angela Rachidi and Matt Weidinger
The Trump administration recently announced a major shift to the scoring rubric for the federal government’s main source of homeless aid—the Continuum of Care program—which annually distributes $3.9 billion in competitive funding to local communities. The new rubric will target funds to recovery-oriented, time-limited housing programs, a reversal of a…
November 25, 2025 | By Kevin Corinth
Increasing fertility is an objective for many countries worldwide, but Hungary’s pro-natal policies have received an outsized amount of attention in recent years. Hungary is unique because its pro-natal policies have been bold and its objectives ambitious. Since 2010, Hungary has implemented a variety of policies, including zero-interest “baby-expecting” loans…
November 21, 2025 | By Vanessa Brown Calder
US pregnancy and postpartum deaths receive substantial news coverage, and reporting is frequently alarmist. This summer, a LiveScience article claimed that “pregnancy is deadlier in the US than in other wealthy countries.” The article stated that there were 19 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births in the US, or…
November 13, 2025 | By Vanessa Brown Calder
Americans have heard plenty about how, effective November 1, the federal government shutdown suspended regular food stamp payments to 42 million individuals. Food stamps are important welfare benefits paid to low-income families—or in recent weeks not paid. For all that attention on food stamps, however, almost no one has mentioned…
November 10, 2025 | By Matt Weidinger
The USDA announced plans to discontinue future Household Food Security reports, ending the annual supplemental survey that, among other things, was used as the government’s official statistic on “food insecurity”. The supplemental survey had been attached to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey each December since the late 1990s, asking…
September 23, 2025 | By Angela Rachidi
May 1, 2026 | Kevin Corinth
Overview The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) posted a notice of proposed rulemaking on March 2, 2026 (Docket No. FR-6520-P-01), entitled, “Establishing Flexibility for Implementation of Work Requirements and Term Limits,” hereafter the “Proposed Rule.” The Proposed Rule would allow, but not require, eligible Public Housing...
April 30, 2026 | Scott Winship
In a recent with Stephen Rose, I argued that the narrative of a “shrinking middle class” was based on a kernel of truth, but one that undermines economic pessimism. We showed that while 36 percent of families were part of what we called the “core middle class” in 1979, the share...
April 29, 2026 | Angela Rachidi
Abstract The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has grown substantially since the turn of the century, providing food assistance to more than 40 million individuals per month in recent years. Using data from the SNAP Quality Control dataset, I analyzed changes in SNAP households and participants from fiscal year (FY)...
April 28, 2026 | Angela Rachidi
The number of people receiving food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has declined in recent months, with suggestions that declines are due to the Republican-backed reconciliation bill passed in July 2025. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA or P.L. 119-21) made several changes to SNAP, including...