SNAP benefits feed essential needs while still leaving many hungry for more

A quick note: Today’s post is written by journalist and author Adam Chandler, a pal of mine who’s an expert on two topics that converge in discussing the potential lapse in SNAP funding—American work culture and fast food culture. The gravity of the situation has weighed heavily on my mind as adults and children alike brace for possible hunger. Here Adam explains what you need to understand about these essential benefits, and what so much of the conversation about them gets wrong. I hope you’ll give it a read. ~ Marisa

On Friday afternoon, two separate federal judges ordered the Trump administration to continue funding SNAP—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program often referred to as “food stamps”—hours before benefits would lapse. President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social that evening “Our Government lawyers do not think we have the legal authority to pay SNAP with certain monies we have available,” adding that his administration has asked the courts for more clarity. Either way, the ability to put food on the table hangs in the balance for the nearly 42 million Americans on SNAP—and just before the holiday season.

In case any of the countless other ongoing domestic sagas have taken precedence, the pause for SNAP was set to be a casualty of the ongoing government shutdown. While right now it’s not clear whether the Trump Justice Department will appeal the ruling or if the funds can be dispersed quickly enough to avoid an interruption to benefits, let’s seize on this brief moment where SNAP is getting some attention to talk a little bit more about this program. It’s easily one of the most politicized, important, and misunderstood federal social programs that we have.

In my book 99% Perspiration published earlier this year, I write about themes of work and worth in American life. And in recent decades, SNAP has come to represent one of those animating fixtures – both real and symbolic – that we hear about, often in terms like taxpayer cost and work ethic. But a more useful conversation about SNAP, the one that tends to be missed, is about persistently low wages for American workers, income inequality, and our threadbare social safety net.

First off, there is a good reason that the terms of the debate around SNAP and public assistance are so broken in American life. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have long sought to score cheap political points by casting those who rely on public assistance programs—with SNAP being one of the best known examples—as lazy, unambitious people who don’t want to work for a living. Until pretty recently, it was a bipartisan political winner. 

President Ronald Reagan infamously castigated “welfare queens,” followed by President Bill Clinton and then-Senator Joe Biden bemoaning the “culture of dependency” supposedly wrought by government assistance. Today, no shortage of rank-and-file GOP members still decry SNAP as detrimental to the American spirit without a hint of irony. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, for example, took racist delight in branding President Obama as “the food stamps president.” And on Thursday, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) suggested that Americans who couldn’t go one month without a SNAP allotment should “stop smoking crack.”

In spite of the rhetoric, the myth that SNAP is a socialist plot designed to give freebies to couch potatoes with no work ethic is as pernicious as it is easy to debunk. To start, in 2023, 39% of SNAP users were Americans under the age of 18. (Obviously, shirkers.) In 2023, 19% of SNAP users were 60 or older. (Classic malingers.) All told, 60% of SNAP benefits go to families with children. (Wastrels!) Worse yet, owing in part to the stigma around public assistance programs and its complex certification requirements, the USDA reports only about 55% of adults above the age of 60 who qualify for SNAP actually use the benefit.

Once you remove seniors and children from the equation, the majority of Americans who use SNAP do work. These are vulnerable people who are battling the rising costs of essentials like housing and healthcare and groceries, as well as the crisis of good stable work in the United States. 

According to the Government Accountability Office, 70% of wage-earning adults who rely on government programs like SNAP and Medicaid work full-time, largely in the vaunted private sector. Notably, that includes workers at hugely profitable companies like Walmart and McDonald’s, whose low wages are effectively been subsidized by tax dollars without any of the blame or paternalistic lectures. As The Daily Yonder notes, SNAP recipients are also disproportionately made up of rural households (13.7% SNAP enrollment) compared to households in metro areas (11.4%), which runs against popular perceptions and tropes about need.

But beyond the particulars of who the program specifically benefits, what the conversation about SNAP also tends to miss is how it benefits everyone. SNAP users, for example, are often able to supplement cheap, processed foods with more nutrient-dense foods like lean proteins, fruits and vegetables, whole grains and dairy. People even use SNAP benefits to buy seeds to grow their own food.* What’s more, before we slashed research on critical public health issues, studies found that SNAP helped people with chronic health conditions like diabetes better maintain their medically-advised nutritional regimens. This is one small example of how programs allow Americans to lead healthier lives, get better jobs and remain more socially mobile, and save all of us (taxpayers included) from billions in expensive and unnecessary medical spending.

(*To be clear, this doesn’t always happen. Public health studies, like this one from Harvard, have shown that SNAP households tend to buy unhealthier food. But before we get lost in the statistical overlap between poverty and food deserts, let me just cite this 2014 gem from The Onion for all those concerned: “Woman A Leading Authority On What Shouldn’t Be In Poor People’s Grocery Carts.”)

Of course, even as I’m here singing its virtues, SNAP remains a woefully inadequate salve for the problem it means to address. It’s not just that SNAP asks struggling Americans to get by on an average of $6 per day, it’s that it also asks struggling Americans to devote precious time to long lines, long waits, and mountains of paperwork to stay enrolled in the program. Frustrating and inefficient by design, SNAP often excludes families experiencing income volatility, which affects one-third of U.S. households, and poses challenges for Americans without steady housing. This is why millions of Americans just don’t bother with it. (According to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, nearly 20 percent of American families who are eligible for SNAP, don’t sign up for it.)

So while this potential interruption to SNAP funding will hopefully pass without immense damage, the public assistance programs that we’re rightly trying to keep funded will still remain inadequate to those who rely on them. It’s all part of a very real dynamic whereby Americans feel their government [at best] isn’t responsive to their lives or their needs. And we’re beginning to see just how dangerous that is.