Food Stamp Program Research Paper
Making the Food Stamp Program More Efficient
According to World Bank, food prices have risen by 83% in just 3 years and will likely continue to rise. With the rising food cost and the fallen economy it is a no brainer as to why we have 49.1 million people living in food insecure homes. American’s would not be starving if the government lowered the IRT, accepted more funding, denied aid to illegal immigrants, who are not working and started to inform more citizens of the food stamp program. “The food stamp program provides monthly benefits to eligible low-income families which can be used to purchase food. Through the electronic benefit transfer systems (EBT) the use of food stamp “coupons” is no longer the means in which a client receives their benefits. EBT replaces paper coupons through use of a benefits card, similar to a bank card. USDA reports that all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico are now using EBT systems. One of the strengths of the Food Stamp Program is its ability to respond to local, state, and national economic changes and emergencies.” http://www.frac.org/html/federal_food_programs/programs/fsp.html Eligibility for the Food Stamp Program is based on financial and non-financial factors. The application process includes completing and filing …show more content…
an application form, being interviewed, and verifying facts crucial to determining eligibility. With certain exceptions, a household that meets the eligibility requirements is qualified to receive benefits. Legal immigrants who are children or disabled can now get food stamps, as can legal immigrants who have legally resided in the United States for at least 5 years. Other legal immigrants and any undocumented immigrants are ineligible for food stamp benefits. Also, many able-bodied, childless, unemployed adults have time limits on their receipt of food stamp benefits. “All households must have net incomes below 100 percent of poverty to be eligible. Most households may have up to $2,000 in countable resources (e.g., checking/savings account, cash, tocks/bonds). Households with at least one household member who is disabled or age 60 or older may have up to $3,000 in resources. Currently, program benefits provide an average of nearly 90 cents a meal per person.” Who can eat off of 90 cents per meal? http://www.frac.org/html/federal_food_programs/programs/fsp.html Low-income working families should not go hungry, and usually need not: they typically are eligible for food stamps, which provide a safety net for families which cannot earn enough to feed themselves. But far too few working families participate in the food stamp program, and the proportion which does participate declined rapidly throughout the second half of the 1990s. Fortunately, the reasons why so few working families participate are fairly well understood. States and the federal government have the opportunity to make changes that will enable more working families to receive the food stamps they need, so no such families go hungry.
Too many American workers need help feeding their families.
For many workers, especially those with few skills and minimal education, wages are simply inadequate to keep the family out of poverty. Hourly wages among families with annual incomes below twice the poverty level average $8.55, and only $8.00 among single-parent families. Wages also are very low among families that have recently left welfare: the median hourly wage for families leaving welfare in 1999 was $7.15, which was 15 percent below that year’s poverty level for a family of four. In 2001, a full-time, year-round worker earning the minimum wage of $5.15/hour earned only 58 percent of the federal poverty level for a family of
four.
One issue with the food stamp program is the IRT level (gross income) or asset test is too low. States can take advantage of a federal option known as “categorical eligibility” to expand access to SNAP/Food Stamps by eliminating the requirement that households have less than $2000 in assets ($3000 for elderly or disabled households) in order to qualify for benefits. States can take advantage of a federal option known as “categorical eligibility” to expand access to SNAP/Food Stamps by raising the income limit from 130 percent of federal poverty level to as high as 200 percent FPL. Raising the gross income test allows families with high costs (like child care costs, housing costs, and medical costs for elderly and disabled families) to access the benefits they need. There are only a few states that have taken advantage of raising the IRT. California is one of the states that need to take advantage of this.
Most government programs find eligibility off of our current gross wages and with taxes rising and medical costs being taken out of our pay check there is no way that we will be able to survive off our net. If they decided to take our net into consideration instead of our Gross that would bring a lot more people into the classification of qualified recipients. Given these low wages, it is perhaps not surprising that one quarter of American workers earn wages so low that full-time work by itself will not raise a family of four out of poverty.3 And the proportion of poor children who are living in working families – and families with a parent working fulltime– is increasing: between 1997 and 2000, the proportion of poor children with one or more parents working full-time, year-round, increased from 27 percent to 37 percent. Over four million children with such working parents are poor. At the same time that wages remain low and poverty rates high, hunger and food insecurity are alarmingly widespread among low-income Americans. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 33 million Americans in 11 million households live in hunger or on the edge of hunger (what the government calls “food insecurity”). Over ten percent of all American households are food insecure. Children make up almost two-fifths of this group: 18 percent of children are food insecure. Eight million of these Americans, over a third of them children, lived in households experiencing hunger due to lack of resources for food at least once in a given year.5 Part of this food insecurity was likely due to rising housing costs, but part was surely due to reasons that will be discussed below: inadequate food stamp allotments and declining participation in the food stamp program. Hunger and food insecurity are especially prevalent among families leaving welfare. According to the Urban Institute’s nationwide survey, about a third of families who left welfare sometime between 1997 and 1999 had to cut the size of meals or skip meals sometime in the year prior to the survey because they did not have enough to eat. Over half worried, either sometimes or often, that their food would run out before they could afford to buy more.6 Studies of families leaving welfare in particular states make similar findings. Fifty-eight percent of families leaving welfare in Colorado reported difficulty affording food, almost double the number who reported having trouble affording food while on welfare.7 Fifty-three percent of such families in the District of Columbia worried sometimes or often about not having enough food; among welfare leavers who were working, 19 percent reported having such worries often. Working does not protect a family from hunger, as can be seen in surveys of emergency food providers. The U.S. Conference of Mayors found that between November 1, 2000 and October 21, 2001, requests for food assistance by families with children increased on average 19 percent. Fifty four percent of the people requesting emergency food assistance were members of families – children and their parents. Thirty-seven percent of the adults requesting food assistance were employed. A 2001 survey of emergency food providers by America’s Second Harvest showed that in 39 percent of households served, one or more adults was working. Thirty-nine percent of emergency food clients were under 18. The study further found that 76 percent of households with children served by emergency food providers are “food insecure,” and 37 percent are experiencing hunger.10 A study of families leaving welfare in Missouri found that 25 percent of working families said that in the previous month there had been a time when they could not buy enough food to meet their household’s needs.
“Before the 1996 federal welfare reform law, legal immigrants and citizens were equally eligible for food stamps. In 1996, Congress disqualified most legal immigrants, removing an estimated 900,000 individuals from the program by August 1997. The non-citizens who remained eligible were primarily (1) refugees and asylees in their first five years in this country, (2) veterans or members of the U.S. armed forces and their spouses and minor children, and (3) individuals with long 13work histories – at least 40 qualifying quarters in the United States – and their spouses and minor children. In 1998, Congress partially restored food stamp eligibility to about 250,000 immigrants. Restored to the food stamp program were immigrants who had been in this country before August 22, 1996 and who are under 18, were at least age 65 on August 22, 1996, or are disabled. The 1998 law also extended eligibility for refugees and asylees to the first seven years they are in this country. Thus, most non-elderly and non-disabled adult immigrants remain ineligible regardless of when they entered the U.S., and almost all immigrants who entered the U.S. after 1996 remain ineligible. Most of these families can only become eligible for food stamps by showing that they have worked here for 40 quarters. In families with only one wage earner, that worker will remain ineligible for at least ten years after arriving in the U.S., regardless of how hard she works or how little she earns. Before the 1996 restrictions on immigrant eligibility, noncitizen families receiving food stamps were more likely than citizen families receiving food stamps to be working. This is likely still true of low-income immigrant families. The cuts in immigrant eligibility have also fallen particularly harshly on the children of immigrants. Nearly a quarter of children of immigrants live below the poverty level, compared with 16 percent of children of natives. Although over three-quarters of children of immigrants are born here, and are therefore U.S. citizens who are not categorically ineligible for food stamps, the participation rate among food-stamp-eligible citizen children living with non-citizen adults has plummeted: between 1994 and 1999, the proportion of eligible citizen children living with immigrant parents and receiving food stamps dropped from 80 percent to 46 percent. In other words, 800,000 fewer of these children received food stamps in 1999 than 1994. Several reasons explain this huge decline in participation. Not surprisingly, many immigrant families are confused about who is eligible for food stamps. Others are afraid of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and believe that applying for food stamps for their citizen children could lead to themselves being deported. Others believe -- incorrectly -- that receiving food stamps may cause them to be deemed potential “public charges,” which might bar them from receiving a green card or becoming a citizen. The loss of food stamps does not mean these families have enough to eat: over one in three children of immigrants lives in a family that worries about or encounters difficulties affording food, ten percentage points more than children in families where the parents are citizens.”
http://www.frac.org/pdf/map_eliminating_asset_test.pdf
“According to the results of the Census Bureau survey, those at greatest risk of being hungry or on the edge of hunger (i.e., food insecure) live in households that are: headed by a single woman; Hispanic or Black; or with incomes below the poverty line. Overall, households with children experience food insecurity at almost double the rate for households without children. Geographically, food insecurity is more common in central city households. The survey data also show that households are more likely to be hungry or food insecure if they live in states in the Midwest and South.” http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html It is obvious that with the times changing we need new ideas and new standards to end this hunger. This is supposed to be the land of the free with endless possibilities. Our system goes off of our gross income which we obviously don’t take home to live off of. This needs to be changed. We should no longer be supporting immigrants either legal or not, when we have our own Americans that are starving.
References:
Websites:
FRAC-Federal Food Stamp Program (2009, October 23)
Retrieved October, 20, 2009 from USDA Secretary Outlines Obama Administration’s Access and Nutrition Priorities for Child Nutrition Reauthorization http://www.frac.org/html/news/news_index.html Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (n.d.) In Wikipedia Retrieved 2010, March 27 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program
Reflecting on food stamp statistics (2010, February 23) in Ethical Musings, Web log message retrieved from http://blog.ethicalmusings.com/2010/02/reflecting-on-food-stamp-statistics.html
Ashiabi, G. (March 2005). Household food insecurity and children's school management. Journal of Children and Poverty. 11(1), 3-17.
Kathleen Gorman et al. (August 2006). Food Security, Hunger, and Food Stamp Participation Among Low-Income Working Families in Rhode Island. Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition.1(1), 105-125.
Diet and food insufficiency among Hispanic youths: acculturation and socioeconomic factors in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. R. Mazur, G. Marquis, H. Jensen. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Vol. 78, Issue 6: 1120-7. December 2003
According to World Bank, food prices have risen by 83% in just 3 years and will likely continue to rise. With the rising food cost and the fallen economy it is a no brainer as to why we have 49.1 million people living in food insecure homes. American’s would not be starving if the government lowered the IRT, accepted more funding, denied aid to illegal immigrants, who are not working and started to inform more citizens of the food stamp program. “The food stamp program provides monthly benefits to eligible low-income families which can be used to purchase food. Through the electronic benefit transfer systems (EBT) the use of food stamp “coupons” is no longer the means in which a client receives their benefits. EBT replaces paper coupons through use of a benefits card, similar to a bank card. USDA reports that all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico are now using EBT systems. One of the strengths of the Food Stamp Program is its ability to respond to local, state, and national economic changes and emergencies.” http://www.frac.org/html/federal_food_programs/programs/fsp.html Eligibility for the Food Stamp Program is based on financial and non-financial factors. The application process includes completing and filing …show more content…
an application form, being interviewed, and verifying facts crucial to determining eligibility. With certain exceptions, a household that meets the eligibility requirements is qualified to receive benefits. Legal immigrants who are children or disabled can now get food stamps, as can legal immigrants who have legally resided in the United States for at least 5 years. Other legal immigrants and any undocumented immigrants are ineligible for food stamp benefits. Also, many able-bodied, childless, unemployed adults have time limits on their receipt of food stamp benefits. “All households must have net incomes below 100 percent of poverty to be eligible. Most households may have up to $2,000 in countable resources (e.g., checking/savings account, cash, tocks/bonds). Households with at least one household member who is disabled or age 60 or older may have up to $3,000 in resources. Currently, program benefits provide an average of nearly 90 cents a meal per person.” Who can eat off of 90 cents per meal? http://www.frac.org/html/federal_food_programs/programs/fsp.html Low-income working families should not go hungry, and usually need not: they typically are eligible for food stamps, which provide a safety net for families which cannot earn enough to feed themselves. But far too few working families participate in the food stamp program, and the proportion which does participate declined rapidly throughout the second half of the 1990s. Fortunately, the reasons why so few working families participate are fairly well understood. States and the federal government have the opportunity to make changes that will enable more working families to receive the food stamps they need, so no such families go hungry.
Too many American workers need help feeding their families.
For many workers, especially those with few skills and minimal education, wages are simply inadequate to keep the family out of poverty. Hourly wages among families with annual incomes below twice the poverty level average $8.55, and only $8.00 among single-parent families. Wages also are very low among families that have recently left welfare: the median hourly wage for families leaving welfare in 1999 was $7.15, which was 15 percent below that year’s poverty level for a family of four. In 2001, a full-time, year-round worker earning the minimum wage of $5.15/hour earned only 58 percent of the federal poverty level for a family of
four.
One issue with the food stamp program is the IRT level (gross income) or asset test is too low. States can take advantage of a federal option known as “categorical eligibility” to expand access to SNAP/Food Stamps by eliminating the requirement that households have less than $2000 in assets ($3000 for elderly or disabled households) in order to qualify for benefits. States can take advantage of a federal option known as “categorical eligibility” to expand access to SNAP/Food Stamps by raising the income limit from 130 percent of federal poverty level to as high as 200 percent FPL. Raising the gross income test allows families with high costs (like child care costs, housing costs, and medical costs for elderly and disabled families) to access the benefits they need. There are only a few states that have taken advantage of raising the IRT. California is one of the states that need to take advantage of this.
Most government programs find eligibility off of our current gross wages and with taxes rising and medical costs being taken out of our pay check there is no way that we will be able to survive off our net. If they decided to take our net into consideration instead of our Gross that would bring a lot more people into the classification of qualified recipients. Given these low wages, it is perhaps not surprising that one quarter of American workers earn wages so low that full-time work by itself will not raise a family of four out of poverty.3 And the proportion of poor children who are living in working families – and families with a parent working fulltime– is increasing: between 1997 and 2000, the proportion of poor children with one or more parents working full-time, year-round, increased from 27 percent to 37 percent. Over four million children with such working parents are poor. At the same time that wages remain low and poverty rates high, hunger and food insecurity are alarmingly widespread among low-income Americans. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 33 million Americans in 11 million households live in hunger or on the edge of hunger (what the government calls “food insecurity”). Over ten percent of all American households are food insecure. Children make up almost two-fifths of this group: 18 percent of children are food insecure. Eight million of these Americans, over a third of them children, lived in households experiencing hunger due to lack of resources for food at least once in a given year.5 Part of this food insecurity was likely due to rising housing costs, but part was surely due to reasons that will be discussed below: inadequate food stamp allotments and declining participation in the food stamp program. Hunger and food insecurity are especially prevalent among families leaving welfare. According to the Urban Institute’s nationwide survey, about a third of families who left welfare sometime between 1997 and 1999 had to cut the size of meals or skip meals sometime in the year prior to the survey because they did not have enough to eat. Over half worried, either sometimes or often, that their food would run out before they could afford to buy more.6 Studies of families leaving welfare in particular states make similar findings. Fifty-eight percent of families leaving welfare in Colorado reported difficulty affording food, almost double the number who reported having trouble affording food while on welfare.7 Fifty-three percent of such families in the District of Columbia worried sometimes or often about not having enough food; among welfare leavers who were working, 19 percent reported having such worries often. Working does not protect a family from hunger, as can be seen in surveys of emergency food providers. The U.S. Conference of Mayors found that between November 1, 2000 and October 21, 2001, requests for food assistance by families with children increased on average 19 percent. Fifty four percent of the people requesting emergency food assistance were members of families – children and their parents. Thirty-seven percent of the adults requesting food assistance were employed. A 2001 survey of emergency food providers by America’s Second Harvest showed that in 39 percent of households served, one or more adults was working. Thirty-nine percent of emergency food clients were under 18. The study further found that 76 percent of households with children served by emergency food providers are “food insecure,” and 37 percent are experiencing hunger.10 A study of families leaving welfare in Missouri found that 25 percent of working families said that in the previous month there had been a time when they could not buy enough food to meet their household’s needs.
“Before the 1996 federal welfare reform law, legal immigrants and citizens were equally eligible for food stamps. In 1996, Congress disqualified most legal immigrants, removing an estimated 900,000 individuals from the program by August 1997. The non-citizens who remained eligible were primarily (1) refugees and asylees in their first five years in this country, (2) veterans or members of the U.S. armed forces and their spouses and minor children, and (3) individuals with long 13work histories – at least 40 qualifying quarters in the United States – and their spouses and minor children. In 1998, Congress partially restored food stamp eligibility to about 250,000 immigrants. Restored to the food stamp program were immigrants who had been in this country before August 22, 1996 and who are under 18, were at least age 65 on August 22, 1996, or are disabled. The 1998 law also extended eligibility for refugees and asylees to the first seven years they are in this country. Thus, most non-elderly and non-disabled adult immigrants remain ineligible regardless of when they entered the U.S., and almost all immigrants who entered the U.S. after 1996 remain ineligible. Most of these families can only become eligible for food stamps by showing that they have worked here for 40 quarters. In families with only one wage earner, that worker will remain ineligible for at least ten years after arriving in the U.S., regardless of how hard she works or how little she earns. Before the 1996 restrictions on immigrant eligibility, noncitizen families receiving food stamps were more likely than citizen families receiving food stamps to be working. This is likely still true of low-income immigrant families. The cuts in immigrant eligibility have also fallen particularly harshly on the children of immigrants. Nearly a quarter of children of immigrants live below the poverty level, compared with 16 percent of children of natives. Although over three-quarters of children of immigrants are born here, and are therefore U.S. citizens who are not categorically ineligible for food stamps, the participation rate among food-stamp-eligible citizen children living with non-citizen adults has plummeted: between 1994 and 1999, the proportion of eligible citizen children living with immigrant parents and receiving food stamps dropped from 80 percent to 46 percent. In other words, 800,000 fewer of these children received food stamps in 1999 than 1994. Several reasons explain this huge decline in participation. Not surprisingly, many immigrant families are confused about who is eligible for food stamps. Others are afraid of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and believe that applying for food stamps for their citizen children could lead to themselves being deported. Others believe -- incorrectly -- that receiving food stamps may cause them to be deemed potential “public charges,” which might bar them from receiving a green card or becoming a citizen. The loss of food stamps does not mean these families have enough to eat: over one in three children of immigrants lives in a family that worries about or encounters difficulties affording food, ten percentage points more than children in families where the parents are citizens.”
http://www.frac.org/pdf/map_eliminating_asset_test.pdf
“According to the results of the Census Bureau survey, those at greatest risk of being hungry or on the edge of hunger (i.e., food insecure) live in households that are: headed by a single woman; Hispanic or Black; or with incomes below the poverty line. Overall, households with children experience food insecurity at almost double the rate for households without children. Geographically, food insecurity is more common in central city households. The survey data also show that households are more likely to be hungry or food insecure if they live in states in the Midwest and South.” http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html It is obvious that with the times changing we need new ideas and new standards to end this hunger. This is supposed to be the land of the free with endless possibilities. Our system goes off of our gross income which we obviously don’t take home to live off of. This needs to be changed. We should no longer be supporting immigrants either legal or not, when we have our own Americans that are starving.
References:
Websites:
FRAC-Federal Food Stamp Program (2009, October 23)
Retrieved October, 20, 2009 from USDA Secretary Outlines Obama Administration’s Access and Nutrition Priorities for Child Nutrition Reauthorization http://www.frac.org/html/news/news_index.html Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (n.d.) In Wikipedia Retrieved 2010, March 27 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program
Reflecting on food stamp statistics (2010, February 23) in Ethical Musings, Web log message retrieved from http://blog.ethicalmusings.com/2010/02/reflecting-on-food-stamp-statistics.html
Ashiabi, G. (March 2005). Household food insecurity and children's school management. Journal of Children and Poverty. 11(1), 3-17.
Kathleen Gorman et al. (August 2006). Food Security, Hunger, and Food Stamp Participation Among Low-Income Working Families in Rhode Island. Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition.1(1), 105-125.
Diet and food insufficiency among Hispanic youths: acculturation and socioeconomic factors in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. R. Mazur, G. Marquis, H. Jensen. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Vol. 78, Issue 6: 1120-7. December 2003