Posted on 08/03/2014 7:00:11 PM PDT by Kaslin
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly referred to as food stamps) has seen a meteoric rise in enrollment in the last fifteen years, and especially in the wake of the 2008 recession. The spike in SNAP recipients post-2008 is to be expected - but the maintenance of those high enrollment numbers is an anomaly.
American Enterprise Institute scholar Robert Doar testified before the House Committee on Agriculture recently to examine this exact question. Doar notes that changes in the SNAP program that took place during this time period may disincentivize work requirements - and keep SNAP participation among working-age population artificially high.
As Doar notes:
In the four years following the end of the downturn in 2009, the number of SNAP recipients increased by 7.3 million. Moreover, the percentage of the population receiving food stamps increased from 13 percent to 15 percent. To give perspective on this number, we can compare the recent recovery with the recovery after the recession of the 1980’s, whose duration and unemployment levels are most comparable. Adjusting for population, in the four years following the 1981-82 recession, there was a 12.5 percent decline in food stamp recipients. In the four years following the 2007-09 recession, SNAP recipients increased by 15.6 percent. Were this recent recovery to have behaved similarly to that of the 1980’s, by 2013 only 11.5 percent of the population would have been receiving SNAP benefits: 36 million individuals as opposed to 47.6 million. That is not a small difference.
By itself, SNAP benefits may not be enough to reduce the incentive for a recipient to go to work, or to move from part-time to full-time regular employment, but when combined with unreported earnings or other assistance programs -- perhaps most notably unemployment insurance benefits – the program does appear to allow a significant number of adult recipients to remain out of work longer than they might otherwise. Without some effort to require these SNAP recipients to participate in employment programs such as those offered under TANF, I fear that the number of non-working, nonelderly, nondisabled SNAP recipients will remain high.
The SNAP program is actually one of the most helpful and targeted of our federal welfare state program. But as said by Doar, who a former SNAP overseer in his time in New York State government, the program has to be viewed as a piece of the overall safety net, and the incentives it provides in tandem with other programs may be harmful. The post-recession increase in utilization of the SNAP program has to be viewed as a new and unique - and possibly detrimental - phenomenon.
“Post-recession”, that’s a laugh.
Nothing odd about it ... in an entitled society.
What idiot thinks the recession is over?
Unexpected.
Odd? Why should anyone getting something for free ever give it up without a complaint? RATS never do.
POST recession, yup.
We are at war with OCEANIA. We have ALWAYS been at war with Oceania….
>> The post-recession increase in utilization of the SNAP program has to be viewed as a new and unique - and possibly detrimental - phenomenon.
*possibly* detrimental?
Under what conditions would having a greater number of your citizens fed by the government at taxpayer expense be viewed as an asset??!?
Fast & Furious was a BOTCHED sting.
Benghazi was a huge shock, owing to a video.
The situation on the southern border is a CRISIS.
Uh-huh, we get it.
The recession’s OVER?
Well, HUZZAH!
(Nobody told me)
I’d like to see an age distribution for those receiving SNAP.
I’ll bet it’s skewed towards able-bodied gen-Xers and millenials like never before.
That's because we have been and are in a Depression. The government continues to lie to us. And all of these "smart" institutes continue to ignore the elephant in the room!
What the graph tells us is either that the jobs added to reduce the unemployment are jobs that are inadequate to support families OR that the unemployment rate is a lie.
Like being fat, or an unwed mother, food stamps are no longer intolerable.
They moved the unemployed over to ‘disabled’ (11 million plus) and now don’t even count people who gave up looking for work because the economy is terrible.
Notice how all the SMARTEST people in the world are befuddled by so much..?
Stuff —all kinds of stuff familiar to you and I, the peons— proves to these beard-strokers as CONFUSING, or UNIQUE, or ANOMALOUS.
Some much-ballyhooed, fundamental economic turning-point is always at the lllllllast nanosecond magically thwarted, oops, NEXT time —weather, computer glitch, could be a million things.
It’s sorta like Scotty, of Scotty’s Castle yore —the country is wandering around Death Valley, and the long-promised glittering castle of gold is always juuuust around the corner, over the next sand dune, oh wait, whoops,…it must be the next sand dune, I promise….
HOW MUCH will the country pay in tuition, I wonder, before these geniuses get some smarts…?
We’ll be dead.
Well, if you were Obama and his wife dining out on lobster, filet mignon, cavier and truffles, vacationing for 350 days a year knowing that your daughters (no matter what their IQ) was going on to a Ivy League school with a sinecure after they flunked out, you’d think the recession was over too! Now stop complaining, sir.
Economics rule #1 - give something away for free, and demand becomes potentially infinite.
The more people that are dependent on the government, the more successful Obama is.
why is that an “odd trend”, the economy’s been destroyed and people need to feed their children, children having children is now accepted too, since the democrats have made existence all about sex, so what do they expect?
The odder trend is stealing taxpayer money to give out as “grants” to fake corporations to build new energy garbage that doesn’t work and no one wants
And the even odder trend is to steal taxpayer money to fly the head of administration and his family on all their ultra luxurious vacations
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.