SNAP solves poverty

SNAP Reduces Poverty and Deep Poverty Nationally, 3.6 million people — including 1.5 million children — were lifted above the poverty line in 2016 under the alternative poverty computation that counts SNAP benefits as income, based on Census Bureau data on poverty and income in the U.S.123 However, these estimates understate SNAP’s anti-poverty effects due to the underreporting of program participation in Census surveys. Making this adjustment for underreporting, SNAP lowers the poverty rate by 14 to 16 percent, according to analyses using national data in SNAP Matters: How Food Stamps Affect Health and Well-Being. 124 In addition, the anti-poverty effects are particularly strong when poverty rates rise during recessionary periods. Based on these and other findings contained in the book, the authors “conclude that SNAP is our nation’s most effective anti-poverty program for the nonelderly when adjusted for underreporting, one that is especially good at reducing extreme poverty — by over 50 percent — and also especially effective for poor families with children.” (Households are defined as living in extreme poverty when their cash income does not exceed $2 per person per day.) The average annual decline in the depth of child poverty when adding SNAP benefits to income was 15.5 percent, according to Current Population Survey data from 2000 to 2009.125 The effect was strongest in 2009, when the temporary increase in SNAP benefit levels from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) began. In that year, SNAP benefits reduced the depth of child poverty by 20.9 percent.