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 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 only with respect to 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 that the program 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.