SNAP ENCOURAGES WORK

SNAP plays an important role in encouraging and supporting work a new report says. Most SNAP participants who can work, do work. The program’s benefit structure is designed to reward earnings over unearned income, giving participants an incentive to work.  Among SNAP households with at least one working-age, non-disabled adult, more than half work while receiving SNAP — and more than 80% work in the year before or after receiving SNAP. SNAP’s benefit design has four key features that support work:

• An entitlement structure that guarantees food assistance will be available to any eligible applicant when they need it;
• A benefit formula that favors earned income over other income through an earned income deduction;
• A benefit phase out structure that decreases benefits gradually as income rises; and
• A state option to ease the modest benefit cliff.

Source: Center for Budget & Policy Priorities, 7/25/17, SNAP Work Incentives

SNAP PARTICIPANTS WORK DESPITE EMPLOYMENT BARRIERS

A new report finds SNAP participants are strongly connected to the labor force, but many experience changes in employment and labor force participation over the course of a year. In addition, many SNAP participants who are not employed face significant barriers to work. In April 2010, 41% of SNAP participants ages 18 to 59 were employed; most of the remaining participants were out of the labor force (46%) rather than unemployed (13%). Employed SNAP participants earned, on average, $1,250 per month before taxes and worked 40 hours per week. Nearly all employed participants (88%) worked one job; 10% worked at two jobs. SNAP participants who were not working faced a diverse set of barriers to employment. Many lacked significant recent work experience. More than two-thirds (68%) of had not worked in the past 18 months.

Source: Mathematica Policy Reports, 7/19/17, SNAP Work Data

Most SNAP recipients are working poor households

When the President's budget director unveiled the administration's blueprint for significant cuts to SNAP, he noted that the aim was to get people working. "If you're on food stamps and you're able-bodied, we need you to go to work….," Mick Mulvaney said. But the reality is, many people (44%) who rely on SNAP live in a family where at least one person is working, according to the latest USDA figures. And when it comes to families on SNAP with kids, a majority — 55% — are bringing home wages, according to USDA. The problem is, those wages aren't enough to actually live on. As it turns out, many of the working poor who rely on SNAP benefits are employed in the food industry; 52% of fast-food workers are enrolled in, or have their families enrolled in, one or more public assistance programs such as SNAP, Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Source: NPR, 5/24/17, On SNAP & Working

Threats to the social safety net

Jim Weill, the President and CEO of the Food Research andAction Center (FRAC) in Washington, DC, was the keynote speaker at the Hunger Solutions New York conference in Albany on Wednesday.  Jim said that we live in complicated times, where we are uncertain what is going to happen next, but we can count on threats to the social safety net for low-income people.

Jim offered the analysis that SNAP explains a lot about what’s happening in this country.  1 of 8 people in the US receive SNAP benefits each month.  Movement in and out of poverty means that half of all children are on SNAP at some point in their childhood and half of all adults receive SNAP at some point between ages of 20 and 60.

Jim continued by noting that most low-income people and SNAP recipients are working or anxious to get back to work.  Or they are hoping for living wages or struggling in retirement.  Yet these people identify themselves as middle class, despite their struggles.

Jim looked back over the last few decades in his speech.  The economy is twice as big per capita as when Reagan took office, but despite that, the poverty rate is higher.  High food insecurity, the USDA measure of hunger, is double what it was during Clinton administration.  Median earnings have declined to about 2/3 of what they were in the 1970’s.  At same time, the rich are getting richer.  All these things explain the frustration demonstrated in the last election,

Next, Jim noted that it would be even worse if it wasn’t for government intervention – Medicaid, SNAP, etc. – which have been improved over last 30 years to reach the working poor.  These programs lift people out of poverty and food insecurity.  SNAP lifts more people out of poverty than any other program except social security for the elderly.

Government has been picking up the slack dropped by employers – wages, health insurance, etc.  Many conservatives want to dismantle these programs, but employers won’t be picking these things back up.  We can expect that the cuts will take a variety of forms – tougher work tests, time limits, drug testing, limiting options for states, and block granting programs.  We can see the results of block granting with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, what most people refer to as “welfare”).  When TANF was turned into a block grant to the state, on average states spent only half of the money they receive for this program on services for low-income people.  Some states spend only 20% on direct services!

Many of the proposals around the social safety net carry a double whammy for low-income people as they will both lower the minimum wage and cut programs that support working poor.  FRAC’s public opinion polling indicates that 8 out of 10 people don’t want to see these programs cut.  To prevent these kinds of cuts, this year is going to be critical.  Jim urged us to keep up our advocacy at the national level, but also engage mayors and town councils to work with our Congressional delegation on these issues.

SNAP HELPS MILLIONS OF LOW-WAGE WORKERS

SNAP, the nation’s largest anti-hunger program provides millions of workers with income to help feed their families.  The share of all households with earnings in an average month while participating in SNAP rose from 19% in 1990 to 32% in 2015.  Among households with children and a non-elderly, non-disabled adult, about 60% have earnings while participating in SNAP. Most workers who participate in SNAP are in service occupations (e.g., home health aides or cooks), administrative support occupations (e.g., customer service representatives), and sales occupations (e.g., cashiers). These occupations pay wages close to or below the poverty threshold for a family of three. Low-paying jobs often have scheduling practices that contribute to workers’ low and volatile incomes, plus create barriers to retaining employment and career advancement  by making it harder to arrange child care, search for a new job, or attend school or training. And most low-wage jobs lack benefits such as paid sick leave and health insurance.

Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 5/10/17, Workers in SNAP

SAFETY NET’S BIGGEST BENEFICIARIES: WHITE WORKING CLASS

In both percentage terms and absolute numbers, federal safety net programs like SNAP reduced poverty among working-age whites without a college degree more than they did among Hispanics and African Americans with similar educations, and far more than they did among college-educated adults of any race. The number of these working-age whites, in fact, exceeded the combined number of non-college-educated blacks, Hispanics, and members of other races that made such gains. The results underscore the challenge Republicans face reconciling their ideological determination to shrink the federal government with the practical needs of their increasingly working-class coalition.

Source: Atlantic, 2/16/17, Safety Net

WHY POOR WORKING MOTHERS CAN’T GET AHEAD

Single mothers comprise more than 85% of welfare recipients, which is why child care support was a key focus of welfare reform legislation in 1996, which boosted federal funding for child care and streamlined it into the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), the main source of funding states can use to provide child care subsidies for poor families.  The problem is that once welfare recipients get a toehold in the job market, they may end up losing child care help just as they are transitioning out of welfare.  And while CCDBG child care subsidies are supposed to help pick up the slack, only a tiny fraction of the children eligible for that help are getting it.  Research shows that access to child care help from the CCDBG program are at a 16-year low, with only 13% of all eligible children currently receiving child care assistance.

Source: Center for Law and Social Policy, 3/15/16, Child Care Subsidies

The Cost of Being a Low-Wage Worker

There is an enduring myth that people who rely on public assistance are unwilling to work. However, there are 41.2 million working Americans (nearly 30 percent of the workforce) who receive public assistance—and nearly half of these workers (19.3 million) have full-time jobs...Americans are working harder, more productively, and with more education than ever, but are treading water. Read more > from the Economic Policy Institute...

Retail workers dilemma this holiday season

For many low-income workers, the holiday season means extra hours and extra income, but that can also mean that they get cut off from SNAP or other public benefits that are helping their families survive, even though the extra income goes away right after the holidays.

One woman said, "I was on my way to my job when my food stamps were cut off. They had called me to work there overtime for one day and I thought to myself, 'Well, if I go down there this one day, are they going to cut my food stamps off? I really didn't know what to do. I don't think it's fair for us to get reprimanded for doing something positive.'"

Read more about the effects of the SNAP cliff in a new report from Children's health Watch. And find some options for action in their recent blog post.

Gloria

From Paycheck to Food Pantry

More than half (54%) of all households seeking charitable food assistance from the Feeding America network include at least one member who had employment in the past year, according to a recent study released by Feeding America® andOxfam America® ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday season. All told, approximately 25 million people live in these households. The study details the challenges that many working Americans face in providing enough food for their households. Feeding America is the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief organization and Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization.

Recent economic growth has resulted in improved circumstances for some individuals and their families, but its benefits have excluded many others, including the more than 17 million1 American households facing food insecurity. Many of these households have working members whose wages are too low to support themselves and their families.