Abstract

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a means-tested transfer program 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 between the business cycle and SNAP’s caseload. We leverage this literature—as well as data from the US Department of Agriculture and Bureau of Labor Statistics—to simulate how large SNAP would have been in recent decades had the program’s size varied over time with respect to only the unemployment rate. Using a base year of 2000, we find that if SNAP’s caseload had varied based on the unemployment rate and population growth alone, the program would currently serve between 3 and 6 percent of Americans rather than the 13 percent of Americans it now serves. Moreover, we find that the program’s expenditures would range from $18 billion to $34 billion, less than one-third of the $109 billion currently spent on benefits.

Introduction

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federal food assistance program that provided benefits to approximately 42 million Americans per month in 2024 (FNS 2024b). SNAP provides low-income households with a benefit that can be used at food retailers to purchase groceries, and it is available to all households that meet the program’s eligibility criteria. SNAP has a relatively high participation rate—the overwhelming majority of households eligible for SNAP receive benefits (Buttenheim et al. 2023). According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), nearly 90 percent of eligible households received SNAP benefits in 2022, and virtually all households below the poverty line received benefits (Vigil and Rahimi 2024).

To receive SNAP benefits, households must meet several federal eligibility criteria. First, their gross income must be below 130 percent of the federal poverty line. For example, in fiscal year 2023, a three-person household must have had a monthly income below $2,495 (i.e., an annual income below $29,940) to be eligible for SNAP (FNS 2022). However, in most states, households are categorically eligible for SNAP if they receive benefits from other safety-net programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Security Income (a policy known as broad-based categorical eligibility, or BBCE). Because states can use BBCE to expand income eligibility limits up to 200 percent of the federal poverty line, many households with gross incomes between 130 and 200 percent of the federal poverty line in these states may still be eligible for SNAP (Aussenberg and Falk 2022). In addition to the gross income test, households’ net income must be below the federal poverty line. Net income is calculated by subtracting several income deductions—including a standard deduction, medical expense deduction, excess shelter deduction, and earnings deduction, for example—from the households’ gross income (Monkovic 2024).¹

SNAP’s caseload and expenditures are countercyclical by design—that is, the size of the program expands during periods of high unemployment and contracts during periods of low unemployment. The intuition is straightforward: As unemployment increases, so too should the share of Americans below the poverty line (or 130 percent of the poverty line) and, consequently, the number of people eligible for and receiving SNAP. This pattern is precisely what we observe over the past several decades—SNAP’s caseload and expenditures generally increase as the unemployment rate increases and generally decrease as the unemployment rate decreases (Rachidi 2021).