This report, the latest in an annual series, presents 2023 national and state-level estimates of the number of people eligible to receive benefits provided through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children and the percentage of the eligible population and the general U.S. population participating in the program.
USDA Terminates Redundant Food Insecurity Survey
Washington, D.C., Sept. 20, 2025 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the termination of future Household Food Security Reports. These redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger.
For 30 years, this study—initially created by the Clinton administration as a means to support the increase of SNAP eligibility and benefit allotments—failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder. Trends in the prevalence of food insecurity have remained virtually unchanged, regardless of an over 87% increase in SNAP spending between 2019 - 2023.
USDA will continue to prioritize statutory requirements and where necessary, use the bevy of more timely and accurate data sets available to it.
###
This notice sets forth the interpretation that the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses for the term “Federal public benefit” as used in Title IV of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. In doing so, this notice supersedes any prior interpretation in any notice or other document issued by any USDA agency. This notice also describes and preliminarily identifies the USDA programs that provide “Federal public benefits” within the scope of PRWORA.
SNACS-II studied child care providers who participate in the Child and Adult Care Food Program. This study found that these providers serve healthy meals and snacks to the children in their care. Children have better overall diets on days when they are in child care than on days when they are not.
This report, in the WIC Infant and Toddler Feeding Practices Study 2 (WIC ITFPS-2)/ “Feeding My Baby” Study analyzes the long-term impact of the USDA’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) by gathering information on caregivers and children over the first nine years of the child's life after enrollment in WIC, regardless of their continued participation in the program.
We are committed to upholding Secretary of Agriculture Rollins’ priority to take swift action to minimize instances of fraud, waste, and program abuse, and to ensure American taxpayer dollars are spent with integrity and accountability. We are issuing this memo, both in support of that priority and in response to requests from SNAP state agencies and FDPIR administering agencies, for additional guidance on preventing dual participation and ensuring comparable disqualifications are applied in SNAP and FDPIR.
We periodically examine how SNAP households use their monthly EBT benefits, including number of purchase transactions per month, average purchase amount, types of retailers frequented, and rate at which households exhaust their benefits over the month. This study, the fourth in the series, was done to assess monthly EBT redemption patterns during FY 2022 when SNAP EBT benefits were much larger than usual due to pandemic funding. By FY 2022, SNAP households could also use SNAP EBT to purchase groceries from authorized online retailers, so we analyzed benefits redeemed through online purchasing.
We periodically examine SNAP benefit redemption patterns related to the timing, number, and dollar amount of transactions and the rate at which households spend down and exhaust their monthly benefits. These studies also report on the number of transactions made and the share of benefits redeemed at various types of stores.
We release annual reports describing the persons and households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This report uses the fiscal year 2023 SNAP Quality Control data to examine the demographic characteristics and economic circumstances of SNAP households at the national and state level.