Food Stamps Research Paper

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers food assistance programs that help provide food for low to no income families. It is their goal to increase food security and reduce hunger by increasing access to food, a healthful diet, and nutrition education for low-income Americans (Caswell, 2013, para. 1). Some of the current nutrition assistance programs include “the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)”(Caswell, 2013, para. 1). SNAP will be the primary nutrition assistance program of the paper at hand. No matter how morally good it is to try to help reduce hunger and increase food security within the United States, there are still many questions regarding issues with SNAP. This paper will be discussing why there is such a strong support for the program, how it helps the United States as a whole, problems with the program, and why some people are against SNAP.

Food Stamp is a government-funded program in the United States. This is a program that helps people buy food for their families; in other words, it is a very important program to families living in poverty. It is the nation’s most important program in the fight against hunger. This program was developed in the 1960’s; it is made to improve the nutrition level and food purchasing power of people with low-income. This program is offered to people who cannot afford to buy groceries for their families, regardless of age, color, sex or religion. Food Stamps can only be used to buy food items not hygiene or household items, and it’s offered only on a monthly basis.

SNAP is the foundation of nutrition assistance programs. This program provides over 47 million individuals in nearly 23 million low-income households. The eligibility is not restricted to certain groups of individuals, and because of this, SNAP serves a vast amount of families with children, elderly people, and individuals with disabilities. Others eligible for SNAP include families with adults who work in low-wage jobs, unemployed workers, and those with a fixed income. The SNAP Program assists about 72 percent of people who live in households with children. Nearly 25 percent of households with seniors and individuals with disabilities, are also assisted (Rosenbaum, 2013).

People who can cook and work need to buy all the ingredients, but in reality, it is hard to make time to shop before work or after work. People who have food stamps are low income people who needs to work for hours to support their family. When people who work need to shop, they need to think about open and close time for the grocery store, shopping time, traffic and finding parking space, waiting line to buy, and also time for going back to their house to drop off all the food and going to work if they are planning to shop before their shift. For example, When you go to the Costco or Walmart, there are long lines to purchase and countless cars in the parking lot. Costco is always busy with people that

Throughout my research, I have gathered a lot of useful information about food stamps, also known as Common Benefit Identification Card (CBIC) (New). Food stamps are a valuable resource for many lower class families and less fortunate individuals. It is the nation's highest anti-hunger program and helps many people. According to fns.usda.gov, “Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) is an electronic system that allows a recipient to authorize transfer of their government benefits from a Federal account to a retailer account to pay for products received. EBT is used in all 50 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam. EBT has been implemented in all States since June of

Food stamps or other words known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP play a critical part in today’s society. More than 46 million American’s rely on food stamps to get through their everyday life. This program kept 4.9 million people out of poverty in 2012 not to mention the over 2 million kids. Food stamps are a voucher from the government for those on low income, exchangeable for food. Many families that have a large number of members, families that only have one single parent responsible for the entire income, or even the disabled which are unable to work rely heavily on this service just to keep food on the table. Furthermore, this is why this

Currently acting as one of the largest nutrition assistance programs administered by the United States Department of Agriculture, The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, works to distribute aid through the form of food stamps to needy, low-income families. The program’s original objective, as stated by the Food Stamp Act of 1977, was to “alleviate hunger and malnutrition…by increasing food purchasing power for all eligible households who apply for participation.” However, while in the short term SNAP allows poor families to make it through the week without facing the same levels of starvation akin to third-world countries, it does not adequately address the crux of the problem, that is, the inability for needy families to become self-sufficient without the need for governmental aid. In actuality, the SNAP initiative is unsuccessful at increasing the purchasing power of its applicants, and ultimately fails to aid its applicants in breaking out of impoverishment or achieving financial independence. To further highlight the inefficiencies of the SNAP program, it should be noted that often the benefits offered through the program fail to even fulfil its short-term purpose of keeping the poor fed and healthy. Despite the fact that more citizens are receiving food stamps than ever before,

Ohls and Beebout talk about the food stamp system and its inner workings in their book. Covering everything from how it works and how it was started to trade-offs of the program. I think the authors purpose for this book is to provide a more in-depth look at the food stamp system. Oh and Beebout intended audience for their book is people that have want to take a look at the food stamp system and want to try and understand more than they knew before. The authors assume that the audience has minimal to no knowledge about the food stamp system and want to further their knowledge about food stamps. They might even be a recipient of the program and want to figure out what is being provided to them. Ohls and Beebout take an emphasis on the whole

Some of the factors that contributed to the design of this program are first and foremost hunger and poverty prevention. By providing a nutritionally adequate diet to low income households, this program allows the facilitation of families devastated with the recession therefore causing an all-time high rate of unemployment and moreover the struggling economy played a major role in the initial significance of this program. SNAP currently helps approximately 40 million Americans who are food insecure, many of which live below the poverty line. Many families are employed but the wages earned does not sustain the household and SNAP is a program that can compensate and is designed to supplement the wages for the lack of resources until a family

A study conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that “the literature is inconclusive regarding whether SNAP alleviates hunger and malnutrition in low-income households.” (Montgomery, 2013) The (GAO) also stated that, “those who choose to participate in food assistance programs generally have greater difficulty meeting their food needs and tend to be more food insecure compared to others that are eligible for programs but do not participate.” (Montgomery, 2013) What this study suggests is that the economically burdensome Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is not only lucrative in cost, but fails to meet its objective of making a sizable impact on food insecurity and hunger issues within the United States most nutritionally insecure counties.

Food assistance programs in the United States have always generated a lot of debate among citizens, congress, and the media. No matter which side of the fence you sit on, the truth is that this program is designed to help those in need. According to an article in the Washington Post, Brad Plumer states that there are at least 47 million people who collect Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program aide (Plumer), otherwise known as SNAP, from the government. These people are collecting this in order to survive; however the United States government has targeted SNAP in order to cut down on the national debt. Robert Rector believes that this reform is much needed and should have been done sooner, but Dottie Rosenbaum argues that this benefit is a necessity in the United States. Many people often think of the negative side effects of collecting this aid, and how the bad outweighs the good.

Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as ‘food stamp program’ is a food procurement assistance which is intended to serve no income and low wage income earners in the United States of America. The government entities who offers this service is the division of children and family services in all the states of America through the food and nutrition service (FNS) which is a part of the department of agriculture.

Now known as Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, food stamps are essentially “vouchers used by the government to those on low income, exchangeable for food.” These are benefits given every month, issued on a plastic card to be used like a debit card in convenience stores, grocery stores, and even at some farmer’s markets. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition board, there are about 46.5 million people receiving food stamps in the United States. Some states require the food stamp recipient to be employed or trying to find work before they can receive those food stamps. According to a “Fox and Friends” segment on Fox News, “Indiana will be reinstating rules that will require at least 20 hours of work a week to receive certain benefits such as food stamps” (NorthShore TP). This means that in Indiana, people below the poverty line will have to have worked at least 20 hours that week to receive their government issued benefits, to give an incentive to find a job instead of just taking the handouts with no effort to find work and get off welfare, or get to a point where they do not need food stamps any longer. However, according to Fox News Insider, “more than forty states still do not require welfare recipients to work” (Fox News Insider). This means that these people do not have an incentive to find work to provide for themselves, but just apply for the

Poverty is a big issue for most of the US, trying to reduce child poverty is a big goal for a long time. An article called “Ending Child Poverty Now” on Children’s Defense Fund, explains how poverty hurts children and how it affects children in the future. Next, the article explains how people could reduce child poverty by 60%. The first way was to provide subsidized jobs with fair wages, this would increasing employment, and providing building skills for the future. The next way people could reduce poverty is to increase benefit range for all low income families, like The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP benefits. SNAP has helped fight hungry for about 20.5 million children and has kept 2.1 million children from poverty in

Across the United States, as of July 2016, approximately 43,369,684 people received Government funded food stamps to feed their families. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program known as SNAP, is funded by the Food Research Action Center known as FRAC, a private, nonprofit organization. FRAC receives its funding from the Federal Government. In December 2015, the year-end report had reported that the U.S. Government spent 80 billion dollars on the SNAP program alone. 1.1 percent of each tax payer’s tax dollars is put towards welfare costs. The Food Stamp Act of 1977 was an act intended to provide better nutrition for low-income families. However, fraudulent use of these benefits has become