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Following through on this proposal would cost Pennsylvania $10.46 billion over that nine-year period or roughly $1.16 billion per year. That is a reduction of approximately 20% of the $4.26 billion spent on SNAP each year in Pennsylvania.
Here I want to describe the impact of these cuts on Pennsylvanians who rely on SNAP, reminding us all that SNAP does not just benefit those who receive it directly.
The Importance of SNAP in Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania, SNAP benefits two million people or 15% of the state’s population. Of those two million, 58% are families with children. And 44% are households with family members who are seniors or disabled. More than 280,000 Pennsylvania SNAP recipients are over the age of 65. Of all Pennsylvania’s young people under the age of 21, 765,000 receive SNAP.
SNAP benefits in Pennsylvania mostly go to families living in poverty: about 69% of the families receiving SNAP have an income that falls below the poverty line. The other 31% live just above it. By helping families afford food, SNAP enables them to pay for life’s other necessities. On average, SNAP lifted 304,000 people, including 109,000 children, above the poverty line between 2015 and 2019.
SNAP benefits are not high to begin with. On average, each person in a household receiving SNAP receives only $178 per month or $5.85 per day.
SNAP and Grocery Stores
Cuts in SNAP don’t just hurt those who are food-insecure. It has serious costs for our economy. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, every $1 spent on the program generates $1.54 in local economic activity since SNAP income is almost entirely spent in local food stores. In Pennsylvania, SNAP pays for 8% of all grocery store purchases, and, of course, far more in low-income communities. In this notoriously low-margin business, an 8% reduction in purchases could threaten the survival of grocery stores. In many places in Pennsylvania, and especially Philadelphia, we have made major strides in reducing food deserts in recent years. This drastic cut to grocery store revenues would lead some of these stores to close. Low-income Pennsylvanians would be forced to buy food at small corner stores, which have higher prices and a much worse selection of high-quality, healthy foods than grocery stores.
Cutting “Waste, Fraud and Abuse” Wouldn’t Save Much Money Even if it Were Possible
It is sheer nonsense to say that the cuts could come from reducing waste, fraud, and abuse. SNAP has one of the best quality control systems of any government program.[1] Human error on the part of eligibility workers or applicants does lead to some overpayments, but the net overpayment rate—overpayments minus underpayments—was 5% in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year for which we have data. That is far less than the dollar amount of cuts proposed in the House budget resolution. And it is far less than the estimated gap of 15% between taxes owed and taxes paid.
Moreover, no one has a good idea of how to reduce overpayments without paying more for administrative staff than would be saved in program costs. No bureaucracy, public or private, is perfect—and the cost of achieving perfection is so high that it’s rarely a goal in either the public or private sector.
How SNAP Might Be Cut and How It Would Hurt
We don’t yet know the details involved in Republicans cutting funds for SNAP. Those decisions are made by legislative committees after the final budget resolution is adopted. We do know, however, that a 20% reduction in SNAP spending in Pennsylvania would require some combination of restrictions on beneficiaries or benefits, although we do not know how the cut would be apportioned between restrictions on eligibility or a reduction in benefits. But a 20% reduction in beneficiaries would push 400,000 people off the program. And a 20% reduction of the average benefit would reduce it from $5.85 to $4.68 per person per day.
Increasing the State Share of SNAP Costs
Lately, Republicans have been talking about a proposal floated by House Agriculture Committee chairman Glenn Thompson, who represents the fifteenth congressional district in Pennsylvania. That plan is to require states to match a percentage of the cost of SNAP benefits for the first time in the program’s history. (States now pay for half of the program’s administrative expenses, not for benefits.)
This proposal is being put forward as a way for states to have “skin in the game.” But it is really just a way to hide a federal spending cut and force state officials to take the blame for cuts to the program. And it would put states like Pennsylvania in a difficult situation.
A ten-percent match last year would have cost the state $427 million. This is the equivalent to 1.5 times what the state spends on community colleges and twice what it spends on environmental programs. At a time when state revenues do not even cover annual General Fund expenditures—with the gap of over $4 billion being covered by the accumulated state surplus—it would be very difficult for Pennsylvania to come up with $427 million for a 10% share of SNAP benefit cuts. A 20% state share would simply be impossible to meet.
And if the state could only pay part of the cost, the result would be deep cuts in federal support for the program. For example, if the state can only put in half of the 10% match—or $214 million—it would lose more than $2.13 billion in federal funding or half of the current benefit level. That would result in a dramatic reduction of benefits or eligibility, requiring some combination of a 50% reduction in benefits or in eligibility.
Update 4/28/25: It now appears that the Agriculture Committee is considering a 22.5% state share of Medicaid benefits. This would cost Pennsylvania an extraordinary $960 million per year to protect all the SNAP benefits currently received by Pennsylvanians. It is extremely unlikely that the state could come up with these funds.
A Reduction in Benefits?
Another possible way for the federal government to reduce SNAP would be to roll back the 2021 improvements to SNAP benefits. SNAP benefits are based on the “Thrifty Food Plan,” which is based on an estimate of how much it costs to pay for a healthy diet. In 2021, Congress mandated a revision of the plan to start in 2022 that would make its estimates of the cost of a healthy diet more realistic. This led to a national average increase in SNAP benefits from $4.80 to $6.20 per person per day (in 2024 dollars), an increase of 30%. One possible reduction to SNAP being discussed among Republicans would be to revert back to the 2021 method of calculating the Thrifty Food Plan, which would drastically reduce benefits. Benefits in Pennsylvania would, again, likely drop 22% from about $5.85 per day to $4.53 per day.
Work Requirements
One other way Republicans are proposing to reduce the cost of SNAP is to expand work requirements for SNAP recipients. SNAP already has work requirements. But, as we explain here, work requirements for social safety net programs, in general, are neither necessary or a good idea. They are not necessary because most people who receive SNAP and are able to do work. As we explain in our in our blog post on the subject, many are not able to work, either because they have lost their job in difficulties and are trying to find a new one or are ill or disabled or have responsibilities to take care of children or elderly relatives. It is precisely those circumstances for which the safety net has been designed.
Work requirements are a bad idea because they only reduce the costs of SNAP by creating red tape that stops people who deserves social safety net benefits from receiving them. In particular, rigid work requirements do not take into either economic circumstances or the the uncertain and erratic nature of low-income work
Studies of the imposition of work requirements in 2013 show that the number of SNAP recipients declined substantially[2]. But few additional SNAP receipients worked.[3] The failure to generate additional work, especially among able-bodied adults without dependents, is largely due to a combination of the difficulties faced by SNAP recipients and chronic high unemployment levels in the distressed communities in which they often live. SNAP recipients who lack skills or credentials required for jobs available in their communities, or who struggle with health and transportation limitations and, in some cases, criminal records, have a hard time finding jobs. Indeed, homeless people are disproportionately found among those who lost SNAP benefits after the imposition of work requirements.[4] The limited services provided them—that involve job searching—are not sufficient to overcome these barriers. And the uncertain and erratic nature of low-income work often make it impossible for SNAP recipients to meet work requirements. All of us who have, at one time in our life, worked in the fast foo industry know that schedules are unpredictable and can be reduced at any time when business is less than expected. Thus a SNAP recipient can fail to meet the work requirement through circumstances entirely out of his or her control.
The result, then, is that work requirements have removed hundreds of thousands of people who have serious difficulties in supporting themselves from receiving SNAP benefits, generating and exacerbating hunger and distress among already vulnerable populations.
Republican proposals to expand work requirements would make the difficulties created by the existing program even worse. At present, adults who are taking care of children, whether school age or below, or an incapacitated person are exempt from work requirements. Some Republicans are proposing that work requirements should apply to parents of such children. This would put 317,000 people in households that receive SNAP in Pennsylvania at risk of losing it.[5] Moreover, to work full time—and avoid any lapse in hours worked that would knock them off SNAP, such parents would need child care. Good child care would cost more than the meagre SNAP benefits these parents receive. They would thus be forced to make a horrible choice: don’t work and lose SNAP benefits or leave their children in sub-standard day care in order to keep their SNAP benefits.
Another new work requirements proposal being discussed among Republicans is to apply work requirements to people up to the age of 60 instead of, as is currently done, up to the age of 54. This proposal would put 84,000 Pennsylvanians at risk of losing SNAP benefits. In light of the employment difficulties described above, it makes no sense to require older people to secure a job in order to keep their SNAP benefits, especially because they are also nearing retirement age and are vulnerable to ageism in hiring. Raising the age limit would not lead to many more people working but it would deny SNAP to people who are already in distress. Frankly, this idea is simply cruel.
Finally, a third proposal being considered would eliminate waivers of work requirements in geographic areas with high-unemployment. States can apply for geographic waivers of the work requirement for food stamp recipients in any area that has an unemployment rate above 10 percent or “does not have a sufficient number of jobs.” Eliminating waivers would be especially problematic during recessions when far fewer jobs are available than normal. But they are also important to economically distressed and declining areas. In Pennsylvania such areas are found not just in some of our urban areas but also quite frequently in rural areas of the state. Indeed there are more waivers in the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, which is represented by the Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Glen Thompson.
SNAP Remains Very Popular
Recent polling data shows that all voters, no matter their political leanings, support SNAP. When asked whether SNAP is important in helping families pay for food when they are facing food insecurity, 95% of Democrats, 89% of independents and 74% of Republicans say it is “very or pretty important.” And 80% of Democrats, 63% of independents, and 53% of Republicans believe that SNAP benefits should be increased. And across the political spectrum, voters say that they would look less favorably on a member of Congress who votes to cut SNAP benefits. Even 52% of Republicans agree with this view.[6]
More Information on SNAP
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “A Closer Look at Who Benefits from SNAP: State-By-State Fact Sheets—Pennsylvania”
Community Legal Services of Pennsylvania, “SNAP Fuels Pennsylvania”
Dottie Rosenbaum, Katie Bergh, and Wesley Tharpe, “Imposing SNAP Benefit Costs on States Would Worsen Hunger, Hurt States’ Ability to Meet Residents’ Needs,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
[1.]Dottie Rosenbaum and Katie Bergh, “SNAP Includes Extensive Payment Accuracy System,” Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, Updated June 21, 2024, https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-includes-extensive-payment-accuracy-system.
[2]. Leighton Ku, Erin Brantley, and Drishit Pillai, “The Effects of SNAP Work Requirements in Reducing Participation and Benefits From 2013 to 2017,” American Journal of Public Health, October 2019, 109(10):1446–1451, https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305232?journalCode=ajph.
They conclude that in 2017 about 600,000 adults lost SNAP benefits due to work requirements, including more than one–third of all able-bodied adults without dependents; and SNAP benefit spending was reduced by more than $2.5 billion.
In fairness, we should also mention that the overpayment error rate in Pennsylvania since the pandemic has been much higher – 12.5% in 2022 and 15% in 2023. Our state received a nearly $40m penalty last year based on these error rates. Our understanding that issue arising with how USDA calculated error rates have now been corrected.
[3]. For example see Jeehoon Han, “The impact of SNAP work requirements on labor supply,” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3296402; Brian Stacy, Erik Scherpf, and Young Jo, “The impact of SNAP work requirements,” 2018, https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2019/preliminary/paper/Z8ZhzBZt; Timothy F. Harris, “Do SNAP Work Requirements Work?” Upjohn Institute Working Paper; 19-297, http://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/297.
[4]. Colin Gray, Adam Leive, Elena Prager, Kelsey B. Pukelis, and Mary Zaki, “Employed in a SNAP? The Impact of Work Requirements on Program Participation and Labor Supply,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 28877, http://www.nber.org/papers/w28877.
[5]. Katie Bergh, Caitlin Nchako, and Luis Nuñez, “Worsening SNAP’s Harsh Work Requirement Would Take Food Assistance Away From Millions of Low-Income People,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/worsening-snaps-harsh-work-requirement-would-take-food-assistance-away.
[6]. Hart Research and New Bridge Strategy, “Americans’ Views on SNAP and Nutrition Assistance: findings from a national survey conducted in spring 2023,” https://savethechildrenactionnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/SNAP-Polling-Slides.pdf .