From Governing: More States Are Forgoing Extra Federal Food Aid

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More than 18 million Americans sometimes didn’t have enough to eat last month, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More than 5 million people often went hungry.

Those numbers would have been higher if millions of families hadn’t received extra food aid through a pandemic-related expansion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.

But at least 16 states now have opted out of providing the emergency allotments, with Republican leaders in some of those states arguing that the extra food aid and other pandemic-related help are contributing to worker shortages across the country.

In 2018, the most recent year for which numbers are available, three-quarters of households receiving SNAP benefits had at least one person working, according to the Census Bureau. And some researchers have long argued that while Medicaid and other welfare programs might include disincentives to work, SNAP does not.

But one of those researchers, Baylor University economics professor Craig Gundersen, said in an interview with Stateline that he had a different view of the extra SNAP benefits with unemployment so low.

“I was in favor of increasing everyone to the maximum benefit during the first part of COVID,” said Gunderson, who studies hunger and poverty. “However, now in an era where jobs are plentiful, to be bumping everyone to the maximum may actually discourage people from working.”

Terms:

- U.S. Census Bureau
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
- Republican leaders
- worker shortages
- Medicaid
- welfare programs
- disincentives to work
- COVID-19 pandemic
- Congress
- food assistance
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- measure of food insecurity
- Great Recession
- federal government
- SNAP benefits
- the federal government and states split the cost of administering the program
- federal public health emergency
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- public health emergency order
- disaster declaration
- U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency
- statewide programs
- food banks
- Feeding Georgia
- Food Bank of Northeast Georgia
- U.S. Department of Agriculture
- mRelief
- work requirements
- employment training
- Foundation for Government Accountability
- conservative think tank
- national labor shortage
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- Section 8 housing vouchers
- Craft of Feeding Georgia