PPI - Radically Pragmatic
  • Donate
Skip to content
  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Locations
    • Careers
  • People
  • Projects
  • Our Work
  • Events
  • Donate

Our Work

Reimagining SNAP After the Pandemic

  • June 29, 2021
  • Veronica Goodman
  • Kaitlin Edwards
Download PDF
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

 

The coming months present the Biden administration with an opportunity to rethink the structure and role of SNAP, our country’s largest anti-hunger program, to better address food insecurity in the United States. During the pandemic, policymakers eased rules around eligibility and access to make it easier to prevent widespread hunger resulting from the economic toll of the pandemic. Studying these changes can inform how we modernize SNAP for the post-pandemic future.

Even before the pandemic, hunger was an intractable problem faced by millions of Americans, and there is a wealth of evidence to support reimagining SNAP by building in more resiliency and making it easier to navigate for both consumers and retailers to strengthen our country’s food system. In this paper, we address recent developments related to SNAP and propose reforms to the program to reduce administrative burdens and churn, ease restrictions on what can be purchased with benefits, make SNAP more resilient for a future crisis as an automatic stabilizer, increase monthly allocations for families with young children, eliminate asset limits, and invest in technologies to increase access and improve participant experience, especially in rural communities. As the Biden administration looks ahead to major public investments, the modernization of SNAP should be included in the American Families Plan.

 

CONTENTS:

 

INTRODUCTION:


Last spring, one of the most startling and grim images from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic were the miles-long lines outside of food banks as the economic toll of the pandemic began to spread across the country. As unemployment rates shot up to levels even higher than during the Great Recession, many families who had never struggled to put food on the table found themselves in desperate need of help.


The sharp rise of hunger during the pandemic would have been immeasurably worse had the Trump administration succeeded in forcing states to impose work requirements on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients, which would have kicked nearly 700,000 unemployed people out of the program. Fortunately, a federal judge blocked the attempt as “arbitrary and capricious.” The Trump White House also considered new federal requirements to drug test applicants and expand work eligibility — two ways of attempting to push more hungry families off of SNAP.


In contrast, President Joe Biden and Congress have made food assistance a top priority, providing aid to hungry families through stimulus and expanded anti-hunger funding, including through SNAP. These efforts have succeeded in reducing historically elevated levels of hunger in America. Recent data released from the U.S. Census Bureau for the end of April 2021 shows that, after multiple rounds of economic aid to struggling families, the percentage of Americans who reported they faced food insecurity was at its lowest point since the pandemic began — at 8.1%.

 

However, even prior to the pandemic, hunger was an urgent problem for many working families, and especially households with children. In 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as many as 10.5% of households were food insecure at some point during 2019, and that number was even higher for households (13.6%) with children under age 18.

While critical, more money alone won’t end hunger. The pandemic served as a metaphorical earthquake that stress-tested many of our social safety net programs, revealing stark vulnerabilities. SNAP is an essential program that needs to be made more resilient against future public emergencies.


SNAP (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) is our country’s single most effective and wide-reaching anti-hunger program. It subsidizes food purchases for nearly half of all Americans at some point during their lives and an estimated one in nine Americans in any given month.
 In 2019 alone, there were 38 million participants who received SNAP benefits in the U.S, and 44% of SNAP recipients are children. The majority of SNAP recipients are also working families with at least one worker, as the program is structured to reward work with increased benefits.


While Republican politicians call for significant cuts to SNAP benefits and giving states more leeway to make it harder for people to apply, Americans broadly recognize the need for food assistance and support SNAP. A 2020 poll conducted by Hunger Free America, a national nonprofit, found that 58% want to increase funding for SNAP, with 32% of that group saying that the money should be boosted significantly. This included support from 40% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats. Historically, domestic hunger has been considered a bipartisan issue, though it has become more partisan over time.

Yet millions of eligible Americans each year do not enroll in SNAP. In 2017, according to the USDA, the take up rate for SNAP was about 84%. Participation rates vary across states, with 52%, in Wyoming, being the lowest. Research suggests that a lack of information, barriers and costs to applying, and stigma around needing food assistance account for most of the gap in participation. For example, in New York City, approximately a quarter of households or
700,000 eligible people do not receive them.

A related challenge is keeping participants in the program. Administrative burdens and inflexibility in recertifying for SNAP benefits increase churn in the program at high costs.

 

To make it easier and faster to get meals to hungry families during the pandemic, the government relaxed some of the burdensome rules around applying for and retaining food assistance. As enhanced pandemic benefits expire in the coming months, policymakers should act to ensure that SNAP doesn’t revert to the onerous application requirements, poor customer service, and outdated enrollment systems that plagued it in the past. We propose that the Biden administration include the modernization and expansion of SNAP in the American Families package later this year given the state of food insecurity both before and after the pandemic.

 

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS: 
To modernize SNAP and increase its effectiveness as one of the most far-reaching hunger prevention interventions, we propose the following reforms:
• Reduce administrative burdens by requiring states to simplify and shorten SNAP applications to reduce barriers for eligible populations. In fact, U.S. policymakers should require states to create a single, straightforward application for multiple social safety net programs to reduce administrative burdens and barriers.
Policymakers should also streamline the burdensome process of applying to be an online retailer for SNAP benefits delivered to recipients’ homes.

• Ease the restrictions on what SNAP benefits can and cannot be used for. For example, recipients should be able to use SNAP benefits for hot and prepared meals. A better approach beyond restrictions would be for policymakers to employ lessons from pilot programs, such as the USDA’s Health Incentives Pilot in Massachusetts, to create incentives for recipients to use the benefits for more nutritious foods.

• Reinforce SNAP as an “automatic stabilizer” in future economic downturns by passing the Food for Families in Crisis Act, proposed by Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colo., that triggers enhanced benefits and relaxed work requirements when the economy enters a recession, and requires that states to use broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE) for SNAP requirements.

• Fill in the gaps in nutrition by adopting the “child multiplier” proposal that would increase the benefit size for families with children under the age of five.

• Reform counterproductive limits on savings and assets that are having the unintended consequence of causing families to avoid rainy day funds and requiring the use of BBCE by all states would help reduce this harm. For example, the Allowing Steady Savings by Eliminating Tests, or ASSET, Act, introduced by U.S. Senators Chris Coons, D-Del., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, would remove these harmful limits.

• Use information technology to modernize social service delivery and reduce the administrative burden on low-income people, states, and retailers. For example, Congress should enact the HOPE Act, which would create online accounts that enable low-income families to apply once for all social programs they qualify for, rather than forcing them to run a bureaucratic gauntlet.
Technology could also improve customer experience and the recertification process to reduce churn in SNAP, and these approaches should be tailored based on the particular barriers and vulnerabilities of certain groups, such as the elderly, rural communities, and college students. The Biden administration should also encourage the U.S. Department of Agriculture to invest in innovative payment systems beyond Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) that will allow SNAP recipients to use mobile wallets and chip cards to purchase food at stores.

 

READ THE FULL REPORT:

 

Related Work

Publication  |  March 2, 2023

From Prison to Business: Entrepreneurship as a Reentry Strategy

  • Anh Nguyen Sidney Gavel Manu Delgado-Medrano
Blog  |  February 23, 2023

Administration Proposes Welcome Reforms to SSI’s ISM Rule

  • Nick Buffie
Op-Ed  |  February 17, 2023

Butler for The Hill: Woke isn’t enough: What Democrats must do to win back Black voters

  • Markose Butler
Op-Ed  |  February 13, 2023

Ritz for Wall Street Journal: Biden Shouldn’t Rule Out a Social Security Commission

  • Ben Ritz
Press Release  |  January 18, 2023

Platform Work and the Care Economy the Focus of New PPI Webinar

Press Release  |  July 20, 2022

PPI Statement on Bipartisan Bill to Protect Student Borrowers in Income-Share Agreements

  • Taylor Maag
  • Never miss an update:

  • Subscribe to our newsletter
PPI Logo
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Donate
  • Careers
  • © 2025 Progressive Policy Institute. All Rights Reserved.
  • |
  • Privacy Policy
  • |
  • Privacy Settings