Sharp Drop in Number of Children Receiving SNAP Food Assistance Under New Federal Law

In the 12 states with available data, the number of children receiving SNAP food assistance has fallen by more than 700,000 since the Republican reconciliation law (H.R. 1) was enacted in July 2025. That accounts for nearly half of the 1.6-million-person decline among people of all ages in those states. (See table.) The sharp participation declines likely reflect, in part, H.R. 1’s shift of large SNAP benefit costs to states, with the amount states owe based on their payment error rate.

The new law’s cost shift has led states to take steps that are making it harder for eligible people to receive SNAP, including families with children. Losing SNAP also makes it harder for low-income children to qualify for other food assistance, such as WIC and free school meals — jeopardizing the short- and long-term health, education, and economic benefits of nutrition programs for our children and society. While cutting SNAP eligibility for children was not a stated target of H.R. 1’s proponents, the cost shift and resulting access barriers are resulting in serious losses of food assistance for low-income children.

Under H.R. 1, states will be required to start paying a share of SNAP benefit costs starting October 2027. States that are unable or unwilling to pay the full cost will either have to take steps to further restrict access or drop out of the program entirely. Congress should delay the new law’s cost shift for two years for all states, not just the few states already granted a delay under H.R. 1, to give them time to improve payment accuracy without taking food assistance away from eligible people.

Cost Shift Part of Major SNAP Structural Change

H.R. 1 imposed unprecedented cuts on SNAP, including a major structural change that requires most states to pay a share of benefits for the first time in program history. Each state’s share is based on its payment error rate (overpayments and underpayments) and could total hundreds of millions of dollars in many states. While these errors mostly result from unintentional mistakes by recipients or the state, the cost shift creates a powerful incentive to reduce error rates quickly, even at the cost of delaying or improperly denying benefits to eligible families — which isn’t counted as a payment error.

Adding to the problem, H.R. 1 also cuts federal funding to states to administer SNAP. And its expansion of SNAP’s punitive work requirement and other eligibility restrictions threaten to take food assistance away from many additional people.

New access barriers and inadequate funding to implement the program changes appear to be having a large impact on children. The states that publicly report SNAP caseload data for children include Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas. (Kentucky also provides child caseload data but is excluded from this analysis due to data quality concerns.) While it’s uncertain which factors are the primary drivers of the participation decline in these states, those declines cannot be explained by an improvement in people’s economic well-being. Nationally, unemployment has remained steady, real wages declined year-over-year in April, food insecurity remained high in 2025, and grocery costs are rising.

Nowhere has the SNAP decline been more alarming than in Arizona, where participation fell by 52 percent (more than 470,000 people) through April, including more than 200,000 children. Arizona’s unemployment rate increased since H.R. 1’s enactment, suggesting this decline doesn’t reflect an improving labor market. H.R. 1’s dramatic SNAP changes and state agency staff shortages have impacted Arizona’s ability to provide food assistance to eligible families and their children.

In Massachusetts, which also faces a staffing shortage, nearly 50,000 fewer children were receiving food assistance as of March, a 15 percent drop in eight months. As in Arizona, the state’s unemployment rate has increased since July 2025. The additional red tape created by H.R. 1 is straining already limited staffing; the percentage of calls to SNAP caseworkers that were disconnected increased from about 60 percent in November (when Massachusetts started implementing H.R. 1) to 81 percent in March 2026.

Losing SNAP Carries Short- and Long-Term Costs

Studies show that SNAP is an investment that delivers continuing benefits for the life trajectories of children and the broader economy. Among other benefits, children have improved birth outcomes and better health outcomes — and they are more likely to be food secure as adults — if they had access to SNAP during early childhood or if their parent had access to SNAP during pregnancy. One study estimated that every SNAP dollar invested in children returns $62 in value to society over their lifetimes due to a range of benefits, including improved educational outcomes, higher earnings in adulthood, increased life expectancy, and increased government tax revenue.

Also, children who lose SNAP no longer have streamlined eligibility for WIC, and they aren’t automatically enrolled for free school meals. SNAP cuts also jeopardize schools' ability to provide free meals to all students through the Community Eligibility Provision by reducing the number of students directly certified for free meals through SNAP.

H.R. 1’s cost shift walks away from our nation’s 50-year commitment to ensure that children in low-income households in all states receive food assistance through SNAP. Congress needs to recommit now to our children’s future. With states in such a bind and the stakes for low-income children so high, at a minimum Congress should provide all states with a two-year delay in the law’s harmful SNAP cost shift.