SNAP Works for America’s Children

While SNAP provides only a modest benefit, it forms a critical foundation for the health and well-being of America’s children.The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) delivers more nutrition assistance to low-income children than any other federal program, making it the nation’s largest child nutrition program.  In 2016, SNAP will help about 20 million children each month — about one in four U.S. children — while providing about $30 billion in nutrition benefits for children over the course of the year.^[2]  (See Figure 1.)  While SNAP provides only a modest benefit — just $1.35 on average per person per meal for households with children — it forms a critical foundation for the health and well-being of America’s children, lifting millions of families and their children out of poverty and improving food security.  Research shows that its support can have surprisingly important long-lasting effects.

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• SNAP lifts millions of households out of poverty.  SNAP kept about 10.3 million people out of poverty in 2012, including about 4.9 million children.  SNAP lifted 2.1 million children out of deep poverty (defined as 50 percent of the poverty line), more than any other government assistance program.
• SNAP helps families put food on the table.  Food insecurity — limited access to enough food for an active, healthy life — among children falls by roughly a third after their families receive SNAP benefits for six months.  Giving families additional benefits during summer months when their children do not have access to free or reduced-price school meals also reduces the prevalence of very low food security among children — when some have to cut the size of meals, skip meals, or even go entire days without food — by about a third.  SNAP’s benefits are concentrated among those with the greatest need.
• SNAP helps improve child health.  Mothers exposed to SNAP (then called food stamps) during pregnancy as the program gradually expanded nationwide in the 1960s and early 1970s gave birth to fewer low birth-weight babies.  Some evidence suggests that children receiving SNAP are less likely than low-income non-participants to be in fair or poor health or underweight, and their families are less likely to trade off paying for health care and paying for other basic needs, like food, housing, heating, and electricity.
• Children who receive SNAP do better in school.  Access to an adequate, healthy diet during early childhood is essential to developing the skills crucial for school success, including memory, emotional stability, and social skills.  SNAP participation can lead to improvements in reading and mathematics skills among elementary children, especially young girls, and increase the chances of graduating from high school.
• Early access to SNAP can improve long-term health and economic outcomes.  Adults who had access to SNAP as young children reported better health and had lower rates of “metabolic syndrome” (a combined measure of the incidence of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes), and women who had access to food stamps as young children reported improved economic self-sufficiency (as measured by a combination of employment, income, poverty status, high school graduation, and program participation).

Key Features of SNAP Are Critical to Its Success

Despite its modest benefit levels, SNAP forms a critical foundation for children’s health and well-being thanks to several important features.  As a national program administered by states, it has:

• A funding structure that enables a quick and automatic response to changing economic conditions.  SNAP benefits are an entitlement, which means that anyone who qualifies under the program’s rules can receive benefits.  This funding structure enables SNAP to respond quickly and effectively to support low-income families and communities during times of economic downturn and increased need.  Enrollment expands when the economy weakens and contracts when the economy recovers.  And SNAP can respond immediately to help families bridge temporary periods of unemployment and weather a family crisis, such as separation or divorce.
• Uniform eligibility rules that make benefits available to children in almost all families with little income and few resources.  Unlike many other benefit programs, which are restricted to particular categories of low-income individuals (such as senior citizens, people with disabilities, families with children, veterans, or people who recently became unemployed), SNAP is broadly available to almost all households, including those with children, that have low incomes.  SNAP eligibility rules and benefit levels are, for the most part, set at the federal level and uniform across the nation, with state flexibility where it can enhance the program’s effectiveness.  This ensures that poor families with similar incomes receive similar nutrition resources regardless of where they live.
• A benefit structure that targets assistance to families with the fewest resources available for food.  SNAP expects families receiving benefits to spend 30 percent of their net income (that is, available income after deductions for certain necessary expenses) on food.  Families with no net income receive the maximum benefit; all other households receive a reduced benefit, reflecting the household’s expected contribution.  As a result, families with little or no income receive larger benefits than those with higher incomes, and program benefits are concentrated among those with the greatest need.  This targeting of assistance also means that benefits tend to be higher in areas of the country where wages and public assistance benefits are lower, making SNAP especially important in southern states and rural areas, where wages generally are lower.
• Rigorous requirements to ensure a high degree of program integrity.  SNAP has extensive requirements that households applying for or seeking to continue benefits prove their eligibility.  It also has sophisticated computer matches to detect unreported earnings, robust measures to ensure the accurate assessment of household eligibility, a Quality Control (QC) system that is the most rigorous of any public benefit program, and a variety of administrative and criminal enforcement mechanisms.
• A sharp focus on providing food assistance.  SNAP benefits are limited to the purchase of food at supermarkets, grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and other authorized retailers for use at home.  SNAP’s administrative funding also supports nutrition education and obesity prevention programs that use evidence-based activities to promote healthy food choices within a limited budget and state employment and training efforts.

The Importance of SNAP for Children

Poor children lag behind non-poor children on a wide range of indicators of physical, mental, academic, and economic well-being.^[3]  Poor children are more likely to have health, behavioral, learning, and emotional problems.  This is especially true of poor children whose families experience deep poverty, those who are poor during early childhood, and those who are poor for a long time.  Poor children are also more likely to be food insecure, and food insecurity in households with children is associated with inadequate intake of several important nutrients, deficits in cognitive development, behavioral problems, and poor health during childhood.^[4]

There is growing awareness among researchers that the consequences of adversity — poverty, abuse or neglect, parental substance abuse or mental illness, and exposure to violence — during the early years of life can extend well beyond childhood and affect physical, mental, and economic well-being as adults.  Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child recently noted that “early childhood is a time of great promise and rapid change, when the architecture of the developing brain is most open to the influence of relationships and experiences.  Yet, at the same time, significant disadvantages in the life circumstances of young children can undermine their development [and] limit their future economic and social mobility[.]”^[5]

It is in this context that SNAP is so important for America’s low-income children.  No other nutrition or income support program reaches as many at-risk children or contributes as much to the overall resources of very low-income households with children.^[6]  And despite the relatively low value of its food benefit, SNAP helps lift millions of families with children out of poverty, reduces the depth and severity of poverty for millions more, alleviates food insecurity, and contributes to children’s healthy development and long-term prospects.

SNAP Serves Millions of Low-Income Children

SNAP serves a broad and diverse cross-section of America’s low-income families and children.  Families with children are more likely to earn a paycheck than to receive government cash assistance while participating in SNAP, and they show a strong connection to the labor force.  And although SNAP benefits are modest, they account for a significant portion of the total resources available to low-income families.^[7]

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• SNAP reaches millions of children who need food assistance.  Many of America’s children face the dual risks of poverty and food insecurity.  One in five children live in poverty, and one in six live in families that have trouble putting enough food on the table.^[8]  (See box, “Defining Food Insecurity Among Children,” below.)  Of particular concern, young children are more likely to live in poor and food-insecure families than older children.  In a typical month, SNAP currently serves about 20 million children — roughly one out of every four children in the United States and one out of three pre-school children (see Figure 2).  Virtually all children eligible for SNAP benefits receive them, although citizen children living with non-citizen adults are less likely to participate (83 percent in fiscal year 2014) than other eligible children.^[9]
• SNAP predominately serves families with children.  While SNAP is one of the few means-tested government benefit programs available to almost all households with low incomes, most participants are part of families with children.  Over two-thirds of all SNAP participants live in families with children (see Figure 3); nearly half of all SNAP households include at least one child, and they receive two-thirds of all benefits issued.  Nearly half of the SNAP families with children include at least one pre-school child (0-4 years old), and more than three-quarters include a school-age child (5-17 years old).  See the Appendix for state-level tables on SNAP households with children.
• SNAP children are diverse.  Nearly a third of the children are younger than 5 years old, two-fifths are 5 to 11 years old, and a quarter are 12 to 17 years old.  Among the children who report their race and ethnicity, a little more than a third are white, nearly a third are African American, and a quarter are Hispanic.  Virtually all participating children are U.S. citizens; 20 percent live in a household with at least one non-citizen.^[10]  About 40 percent live in urban areas, 41 percent in suburban areas, and 19 percent in rural areas.  About three in five children receiving SNAP live with a single adult.  (See Figure 4 and Appendix Table 4.)
   

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• SNAP families with children have little income and few resources.  Over 80 percent of SNAP households with children have gross incomes below the poverty line ($20,100 for a family of three in 2016) while they are receiving SNAP.  Nearly half of SNAP households with children have incomes below half of the poverty line, and about one in seven have no other income while participating.  (See Figure 5.)  Although SNAP benefits average only about $1.35 per person per meal for families with children, they account for more than a quarter of the total resources (cash income and SNAP benefits) available to low-income families with children in months when they are participating in SNAP.^[11] 
   

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• The overwhelming majority of SNAP recipients in families with children who can work do work.  Over half of all families with children where there is a non-elderly, non-disabled adult in the household have at least one working member while they participate in SNAP.  Even more striking, almost 90 percent work in the year before or after participating, demonstrating strong labor force participation.^[12]  (See Figure 6.)  Most SNAP households that work have substantial full-time work.  The number of SNAP families with children and earnings while participating in SNAP has risen for more than a decade, and tripled from 1.7 million in 2000 to 5.1 million in 2014. 
   

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• Few SNAP families with children receive cash assistance.  Only one in seven households with children (15 percent) receive cash assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or General Assistance) while participating in SNAP, primarily because a small share of families eligible for TANF cash assistance participate.^[13]  Prior to the 1996 welfare law, almost two-thirds of SNAP families with children received such cash assistance.
• SNAP helps families with disabled members.  Five percent of SNAP children have a severe disability (that is, they receive a disability benefit, usually Supplemental Security Income), and another 10 percent live with a household member who receives disability benefits.^[14] 
• SNAP offers temporary assistance to many families and longer-term relief when needed.  Half of all families with children leave SNAP within the first year of entering.  Children living with more than one adult tend to leave the program more quickly than those living with one adult.  While half of the children living with married parents leave within 12 months, it takes 20 months for half of children living with a single parent to leave the program, probably because of the additional challenges single parents face in finding and keeping a well-paying job, especially in terms of arranging for safe and reliable child care.^[15]

SNAP Reduces Childhood Poverty

Poverty has many adverse consequences for children’s well-being, including increased food insecurity, poor health, and reduced earnings potential.  Deep poverty or extended periods of poverty during childhood are especially detrimental, increasing children’s chances of cognitive and behavioral problems and leading to adverse outcomes when they reach adulthood.

• SNAP lifts millions of households out of poverty.   SNAP kept about 10.3 million people out of poverty in 2012, including about 4.9 million children, according to a CBPP analysis that uses the Supplemental Poverty Measure — which counts SNAP as income — and corrects for households’ underreporting of benefits.  This analysis also found that SNAP lifted 2.1 million children out of deep poverty (defined as 50 percent of the poverty line) in 2012, more than any other government assistance program.^[16]  (See Figure 7.)
• SNAP also reduces the depth and severity of child poverty — measures of its success in targeting greater amounts of benefits to those in greatest need.^[17]  SNAP benefits reduced the child poverty rate by 6 percent, the depth of child poverty by 16 percent, and its severity by 22 percent in the average year from 2000 to 2011, researchers at USDA’s Economic Research Service have found.^[18]  The benefit increases included in the 2009 Recovery Act substantially increased SNAP’s anti-poverty effectiveness:  in 2009, when that increase was in place, SNAP reduced the depth of child poverty by 21 percent and the severity of child poverty by 28 percent.^[19]

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  SNAP is a powerful antidote to extreme poverty.  The number of extremely poor families — those living on less than $2 per person a day — more than doubled between 1996 and 2011 and the number of extremely poor children doubled.  However, counting SNAP benefits as income cuts the number of extremely poor households in 2011 by nearly half (from 1.6 million to 857,000) and, when combined with supports like housing assistance and refundable tax credits, cuts the number of extremely poor children by more than half (from 3.6 million to 1.2 million).^[20]
• SNAP responds to increased poverty during economic downturns.  There’s evidence that children who fall into poverty during a recession fare worse on many outcomes — poverty status, earnings, educational achievement, and health — than their peers who avoid poverty, and that these differences persist in adulthood.  In addition, economic hardship appears to have a profound impact on children, especially boys, in terms of greater risk of emotional and behavioral problems. ^[21]  SNAP’s ability to quickly respond when unemployment and poverty rise may mitigate such long-term effects.

SNAP Reduces Food Insecurity Among Children

The development, health, and well‐being of children depend on access to a safe and secure source of food.  Thus, it should be a matter of grave concern that 13 million children lived in families that had trouble putting enough food on the table at some time during 2015, even after accounting for SNAP and other food assistance programs.^[22]  While adults often protect the children in their households from the severest forms of food insecurity, in 2015 half a million children lived in families in which one or more children simply did not get enough to eat — having to cut the size of meals, skip meals, or even go whole days without food at some time during the year.  Children without enough food face a host of adverse health and developmental outcomes including poorer overall health; cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems; and lower academic performance.^[23]

The causes of food insecurity among children are complicated and not fully understood.  Income is clearly important, as the risk of food insecurity among children falls as their family income rises.  But income alone is not enough to explain why some children in poor households are food insecure and others are not.  Recent research has begun to highlight the importance of numerous factors other than income, including maternal health, residential instability, and family structure.^[24] 

Nevertheless, SNAP serves a vital role in improving the health and well-being of low-income children by helping their families afford adequate, nutritious food.  Because SNAP enables low-income households to spend more on food than their limited budgets would otherwise allow, it helps raise the likelihood that they have enough to eat.  Recent research demonstrates that SNAP participation leads to substantial reductions in food insecurity.

• SNAP helps families put food on the table.  The largest and most rigorous examination of the relationship between SNAP participation and food security found that food insecurity among children fell by roughly a third after their families received SNAP benefits for six months.  (See Figure 8.)  These findings are consistent with a longitudinal study that shows that participation in SNAP for at least four months reduces the probability of child food insecurity by about half, compared to the month before participation, when food insecurity levels are highest.^[25]

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  Increasing SNAP benefits helps families afford adequate food.  USDA recently completed a large-scale experiment to test the effects of providing families additional benefits during summer months when their children do not have access to free or reduced-price school meals using the existing SNAP electronic benefit transfer systems, with striking results:  the additional benefits reduced the prevalence of very low food security among children by about one-third.^[26]

  Cutting SNAP benefits puts more children at risk of food insecurity.  Food insecurity among children increased after the higher SNAP benefits made as part of the Recovery Act ended.  Families with young children interviewed in health care settings (such as emergency rooms) were 17 percent more likely to be food insecure after the Recovery Act increase was eliminated compared to similar families during the period when the increase was in effect.^[27]

SNAP Improves Child Health

Adequate nutrition during infancy and early childhood is essential to the children’s growth, health, and development.  The rapidly increasing size and function of the brain during the developmental window from birth to preschool demands consistently high levels of nutrition.  Deficits in the growth of brain and body following nutritional deprivation or other hardships during this sensitive period, when the foundations of future health and cognitive development are largely determined, are difficult to remediate later in life.  Children raised in households without enough affordable, nutritious food are more likely to suffer poor health, have inadequate intake of vitamins and minerals important for their health, face deficits in cognitive development, and exhibit behavioral and emotional problems.

SNAP increases the amount families spend on food.  It also frees up resources that families can use to meet their health and other needs.  In addition, SNAP’s nutrition education program (SNAP-Ed) supports nutrition education and obesity prevention programs that use evidence-based activities to promote healthy food choices within a limited budget.

• SNAP enables families to spend more on food.  A substantial body of research concurs that participation in SNAP increases food spending.  Relatively few studies have looked at how this increased spending affects children’s diets.  The available evidence suggests that the diets of low-income children who participate and those who don’t are similar, but are somewhat less nutritious than those in higher-income families.^[28]  The diets of many children regardless of income, however, are far from meeting national dietary recommendations.  Although not limited to families with children, recent research suggests that increasing SNAP benefits by $30 per person (per month) could increase food spending by about $19 and enable participants to purchase foods that are more nutritious and to spend more time on food shopping and preparation.^[29]  Providing additional resources for food also frees up income that families can use to pay rent, cover the cost of utilities, and purchase other necessities like personal care products, basic household supplies, and clothes.
• SNAP participation can improve birth outcomes.  Researchers comparing the long-term outcomes of individuals in different areas of the country when SNAP (then food stamps) gradually expanded nationwide in the 1960s and early 1970s found that mothers exposed to SNAP during pregnancy gave birth to fewer low birth-weight babies.  Prenatal exposure to SNAP may also have reduced infant mortality (though these results were not always statistically significant).  Improvements were largest for the smallest babies, reducing the incidence of low birth weight among participants by 7 percent for whites and between 5 percent and 11 percent for blacks.^[30]
• SNAP participation is associated with improvements in child health.  Researchers at Children’s HealthWatch^[31] have shown that children receiving SNAP are less likely than low-income non-participants to be in fair or poor health or underweight, and their families are less likely to make tradeoffs between paying for health care and paying for other basic needs, like food, housing, heating, and electricity.^[32]  Children who lose some or all of their SNAP benefits are more likely to have poor health, be food insecure, forgo medical care, or make health care tradeoffs than families who consistently receive SNAP benefits.^[33]  A recent study of immigrant children finds evidence that an additional year of SNAP eligibility in early life is associated with improvements in health outcomes — health status (as reported by the child’s parent), overnight hospitalizations, and number of doctor’s visits — between ages 6 and 16, providing evidence that participating in the program as a young child can impact later-life health as soon as school age.^[34] 
• SNAP participation may reduce childhood obesity.  The potential effect of SNAP participation on obesity is ambiguous.  Families could use the additional benefits provided by SNAP to simply increase the amount of food that they buy and eat, which could lead to increases in weight.  Or they could use the additional benefits to make healthier food choices, which could lead to reductions in weight. ^[35]  The research in this area is equally ambiguous, with many studies finding no evidence of a link between SNAP and obesity, some suggesting that SNAP participation might reduce the risk of childhood obesity, and others suggesting that it might increase those risks.^[36]  One study estimated upper and lower boundaries on the range of potential impacts of SNAP and concluded that SNAP appears to lead to at least modest health improvements — reducing poor general health by 3.1 percentage points, obesity by 5.3 percentage points, and anemia by 1.6 percentage points — and could dramatically improve the health of children in the United States.^[37]

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Children Who Receive SNAP Do Better In School

Access to an adequate, healthy diet during early childhood is essential to developing the skills crucial for school success including memory, emotional stability, and social skills.  Food insecurity in those early years may have harmful effects long after the period of hardship is over:  teens who had experienced food insecurity in infancy are more likely to score lower on achievement tests, repeat a grade, and fail to graduate from high school, for example.^[38]  Research suggests that SNAP participation can lead to improvements in reading and mathematics skills among elementary children, especially young girls, and increase the chances of graduating from high school by as much as 18 percentage points.^[39]

Early Access to SNAP Can Improve Long-Term Health and Economic Outcomes

Poor nutrition during childhood may harm health and earnings decades later by altering physical development and affecting the ability to learn.  Researchers comparing the long-term outcomes of individuals in different areas of the country when SNAP expanded nationwide in the 1960s and early 1970s found that disadvantaged children who had access to food stamps in early childhood and whose mothers had access during their pregnancy had better health and economic outcomes as adults than children who didn’t have access to food stamps.  (See Figure 9.)  Adults who had access to food stamps as young children reported better health and had lower rates of “metabolic syndrome” (a combined measure of the incidence of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes), and women who had access to food stamps as young children reported improved economic self-sufficiency (as measured by a combination of employment, income, poverty status, high school graduation, and program participation).^[40]

SNAP Complements Other Child Nutrition Programs

SNAP is one of several programs in the nutrition safety net for children, which also includes the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the Child and Adult Care Food Program.

These programs are a mainstay of overall resources in families with children.  During and immediately after the Great Recession, for example, nearly half (44 percent) of all school-aged children participated in SNAP, the National School Lunch Program, or the School Breakfast Program during any four-month period, and most of these participated in more than one.  School children who participate in SNAP typically participate in the lunch and breakfast programs as well, but less than half of those who receive a free or reduced-price lunch participate in SNAP.  Among low-income school-aged children, food assistance made up, on average, almost one-fifth (18 percent) of their total household resources, and over one-third among those who participated in all three programs.  Food assistance is most critical for children living in deep poverty — those in families with income less than half the poverty line.  Among these children, the full array of food assistance contributed over half (52 percent) of total household resources.^[41]

The largest nutrition assistance programs have adopted rules to simplify the application process, streamline paperwork, and reduce administrative error by using determinations of eligibility for one program — typically SNAP — to confer eligibility for another.  Adjunctive eligibility enables WIC applicants, for example, to be automatically income-eligible for WIC by participating in SNAP, TANF, or Medicaid.  Similarly, through direct certification, school districts that participate in the school lunch program match the names of children living in households that receive benefits from SNAP, TANF, or the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) with school enrollment records.  Children who match are certified for free school meals without the need for their families to complete a school meals application.  School districts are required to directly certify students living in households receiving SNAP benefits and are encouraged to do so for children receiving TANF or FDPIR benefits and for children in foster care.

Most recently, the community eligibility option gives school districts a powerful new tool that makes it easier for low-income children in high-poverty schools to get free school meals.  The option allows schools that predominantly serve low-income children to offer nutritious meals to all students at no charge.  Community eligibility schools have less paperwork to complete, which frees up resources to invest in improving meal quality and increases staff time for other educational priorities.  Instead of collecting and processing individual meal applications for each family, schools are reimbursed through a formula based on their number of students directly certified for free meals.

The increasing connection between SNAP eligibility and enrollment for free school meals means that changes in SNAP policy or practice can have spillover effects, intended or not, on children in other programs.  Policies that restrict SNAP eligibility, for example, may also reduce the number of low-income children certified for free school meals as more are forced to use more burdensome and error-prone paper applications.  Such changes might also affect both a school district’s eligibility for community eligibility and the feasibility of implementing the option.

Conclusion

SNAP forms a critical foundation for the health and well-being of America’s children despite its modest benefit, lifting millions of families and their children out of poverty, improving food security, and contributing to better health and academic achievement with long-lasting consequences.  Much of the program’s success is due to critical features that distinguish it from other safety net programs, including:

• eligibility rules and a funding structure that make benefits available to children in almost all families with little income and few resources;
• a consistent national structure that effectively targets food benefits to those with the greatest need;
• a design that automatically responds to changing economic conditions; and
• rigorous requirements on states and clients to ensure a high degree of program integrity.

Efforts to reform or enhance SNAP should build on its effectiveness in protecting the well-being of America’s children, and preserve the essential program features that contribute to that success.