How SNAP's New Rules Make Eligible Families Go Hungry
The Professor Is In
In this latest episode of The Professor Is In, I respond to subscriber comments and answer questions based on my earlier episode on the SNAP cuts that have led more than 4 million Americans to lose food assistance.
I start by walking through why administrative burdens do so much damage: when it’s harder to apply, appeal, or submit paperwork, the people who fall off are often the ones who need help the most. We can see this in the data — more than 1.5 million of those dropped have been children, even though they were never the intended targets.
I also dig deeper into the new rules for state governments. While a strong argument can be made for pushing states to lower their payment error rates, the fact that they’re not penalized for wrongful denials means that states are increasingly incentivized to simply boot folks off. And because states must run balanced budgets, shifting SNAP costs to them breaks the program’s role as an automatic stabilizer — in the next recession, when more people need food assistance, spending will fall exactly when it should rise.
The $6-a-day benefit may mean groceries for a neighbor, a kid at your child’s school, or a friend going through a divorce whose income just cratered. I believe that if more Americans understood who’s losing help and why, they might feel differently about these changes.
What would Steve Irwin do?