In fiscal year 2011, federal expenditures for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps)—$78 billion—and participation in the program were the highest they have ever been. In an average month that year, about one in seven U.S. residents received SNAP benefits.
In a report issued today, CBO describes the program, its beneficiaries, recent trends in participation and spending, and some possible approaches to changing how it operates. To provide a handy summary of some of the most pertinent information about SNAP, CBO also published an infographic on SNAP.
What Are Some Characteristics of SNAP Beneficiaries?
In 2010, about three out of four SNAP households included a child, a person age 60 or older, or a disabled person. Most people who received SNAP benefits lived in households with very low income, about $8,800 per year on average in that year. The average monthly SNAP benefit per household was $287, or $4.30 per person per day. On average, SNAP benefits boosted gross monthly income by 39 percent for all participating households and by 45 percent for households with children.
How Did SNAP Participation and Spending Change Over the Past Several Years?
On average, 45 million people received SNAP benefits each month in fiscal year 2011, which represents a 70 percent increase over the roughly 26 million people (or one of every 11) who received benefits in 2007. Outlays for SNAP benefits (not including administrative costs) more than doubled during that period, from about $30 billion to $72 billion.
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Nothing in the article about the corruption in the program. I saw an article in our paper where an employee of a local convenience store has customers with Sonora (Mexican) license plates coming in and using U.S. Food Stamp debit cards to purchase items……..really??? Yes, and we all have read the stories about drugs and alcohol being purchased with proceeds from selling food stamp cards. Nothing at all regarding this abuse….what’s new?????
I agree with lizaz. Corruption & Common Sense are often enemies. Helpfulness with accountability are great partners.
And yet no one turns them in.
I have to show a photo ID to pay by check or credit card
why not ask for photo ID for those using EBT cards
Time for the LAZY bums to get off their dead butts and find a job.
Time for CONGRESS to step in and put a stop to this, Only problem is, Congress is nothing but a bunch of WIMPS.
The sad reality is that along with the corruption Obama and his policies have created is a climate of dependency that Democrats just love since it gives them a ready voter pool to keep on their Plantation. This is the same party of Andrew Jackson which caused the genocide of the peaceful tribes ouster from the southern states (Cherokee Trail of Tears). The party that led to the Civil War and gave us the KKK afterward to further the denigration of blacks in this Nation and gave us over 100 years of domestic terror campaigns against the blacks in this nation.
It also the party of the Civil Rights Act and Welfare to keep them beholden to Democrats, many have been in generational poverty since the mid 1960′s thanks to these Acts of Congress, and the inner cities continue to be the cesspits they have always been despite 11 Trillion Dollars being spent on Welfare and the War on Poverty. Lets not forget that Woodrow Wilson a Democrat re-segregated the Military and Government service to obtain his racist agenda. So the corruption is only incidental to the aims and goals of the liberal progressive democrat agenda to continue their desire to destroy minorities in this Nation by Abortion and the Virtual Slavery through welfare programs to keep them subservient, pliable and voting for their own destruction.
Dragging the rest of the Nation to destruction is a bonus that they are only to happy to fulfill as they move along their Socialist Marxist agenda to their Utopia of the discredited principals of rule of economic tyranny by destroying wealth and opportunity wherever it can be found. Obama is just one of it’s most ardent supporters to bring about the endgame and destruction to our Constitutional Republic as he is NOT a champion of the Individual which this nation was founded on as a Natural Right and the Rule of Law are all but forgotten by him the Democrats..