Over the past several months, the reinstatement (or pending reinstatement) of work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – formerly the Food Stamp Program – has been characterized as harsh. According to some, the federal government is going to cut thousands of the nation’s poor people from SNAP and squeeze food-stamp recipients with federal work requirements. While these headlines may grab attention, they mislead and hide the potential benefits of work requirements.
SNAP work rules have been around since 1996, when Congress passed welfare reform. According to the law, adults who are capable of work and have no dependent children (called ABAWDs) can only receive SNAP benefits in 3 out of every 36 months unless working or participating in an approved work activity for at least 20 hours per week. But the law allows the federal government to waive this requirement when jobs are hard to find, evidenced by high unemployment.
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Many states took advantage of these waivers during the Great Recession, but once the economy improved, some states elected to end their waivers (for example, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Maine). Now with low unemployment, many states have no choice but to reinstate the work rules. Currently, 15 states have SNAP work requirements for ABAWDs statewide and another 28 have reinstated them in parts of their state. This leaves only 7 states and 3 territories with no SNAP work requirement at all.
Although often portrayed as severe, the SNAP work requirements serve an important purpose. Most ABAWDs receiving SNAP do not work (83.1% according to the most recent data, Table A.16), or at least do not report work to the SNAP agency. This is mainly because working often puts their income above the eligibility threshold — a full-time job at $9 per hour would make a one-person household ineligible for SNAP.
Work requirements can bring unreported employment to the attention of the agency, and can encourage people who are not working to start.
But SNAP recipients may also not work because getting assistance from the government makes it easier. It is hard to measure precisely the extent to which SNAP disincentivizes work, but research suggests that the introduction of the Food Stamp Program in the late 1960s reduced work, and economist Casey Mulligan from the University of Chicago argues that public benefits, like SNAP, allow unemployed people to avoid looking for work.
A new report by the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) supports these arguments. Work rules were reinstated in Kansas for ABAWDs in late 2013 and 6 subsequent quarters of wage reporting data from the Department of Labor were tracked for those subject to the work rules. According to the report, the share of ABAWDs receiving SNAP who worked at least 20 hours per month doubled in the first quarter after the work rules were reinstated, from 13% to 31%.
Among those who left SNAP (almost 50% left within 3 months of the work rule reinstatement), the employment rate was 39% in the first quarter after the rules were reinstated and 6 quarters later 64% had worked at some point. Without a comparison group, it’s hard to know precisely whether the work requirements caused the increased employment, but the dramatic change in employment is hard to ignore.
In correspondence with the researcher, he explained that some of the employment discovered after the individual left SNAP was employment that existed prior to the work rules but went undiscovered by the agency. But much of it was new, suggesting that the work rules provided an incentive for individuals to seek out a job.
But what about those who were not working after leaving SNAP? Kansas offered an employment and training program to ABAWDs who were approaching the time limit (which would have extended their SNAP benefits if they participated), although services were not guaranteed. Apparently data are still being collected on the utilization of these services, but the researcher indicated that few (possibly less than 400) took advantage of them. It’s possible that they were working in jobs not picked up by the wage data (“off-the-books” work) or they had access to other resources. Ultimately, it’s unclear why many able-bodied adults would not take advantage of education and training in exchange for SNAP benefits.
The experience of Kansas shows that the ABAWD work rules can benefit many low-income adults who are capable of work, but don’t work while receiving SNAP. Work requirements can bring unreported employment to the attention of the agency, and can encourage people who are not working to start. Concern about those who are not working after leaving SNAP deserves attention, but eliminating the work rules altogether is not the answer.
