Program errors and the risk of erroneous payments in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP) continue to be a concern. Slightly more than one in five students were certified inaccurately or erroneously denied benefits in school year (SY) 2005-06. New data estimates the gross cost of school meals erroneous payments due to certification error at about $935 million while other operational errors represent about $860 million.
This report – the latest in an annual series – presents estimates of the percentage of eligible persons, by state, who participated in the Food Stamp Program (FSP) in an average month in fiscal year 2005 and in the 2 previous fiscal years. This report also presents estimates of state participation rates for eligible “working poor” individuals (persons in households with earnings) over the same period.
The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 permits direct verification of school meal applications and requires FNS to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of direct verification (instead of household verification) by school district.
This report is the latest in a series on food stamp participation rates based on the March Current Population Survey, and presents national participation rates for fiscal year 2005.
This is the second in a series of annual reports assessing administrative errors associated with school food authorities’ approval of applications for free and reduced-price school meals. In school year 2005/06, more than 96 percent of students who were approved for meal benefits on the basis of an application were receiving the correct level of meal benefits, based on the information in the application
files.
This study examines the feasibility of expanding the use of computer matching for certification and verification of children eligible for free and reduced-price meals funded under the National School Lunch Program. This study provides a detailed description of how computer matching is currently used and how it could be used.
The Food Stamp Program helps needy families purchase food so that they can maintain a nutritious diet. Families are eligible for the program if their financial resources fall below certain income and asset thresholds. This report concentrates on trends in the participation rates since 1994. It focuses on trends in the rates before and after welfare reform, and throughout much of the economic expansion of the 1990s.
The NSLP offers free and reduced-price school meals to students from eligible households. Households with incomes at or below 130 percent of poverty are eligible for free meals, and households with incomes between 131 percent and 185 percent of poverty are eligible for reduced-price meals. Traditionally, to receive these benefits, households had to complete and submit application forms to schools or be directly certified. Direct certification, on the other hand, is a method of eligibility determination that does not require families to complete school meal applications. Instead, school officials use documentation from the local or state welfare agency that indicates that a household participates in AFDC or food stamps as the basis for certifying students for free school meals.
This is the second report in a series of publications that presents estimates of the percentage of eligible persons, by state, who participate in the Food Stamp Program. This issue presents food stamp participation rates for states in September 1997 and the changes in state rates between September 1994 and September 1997. This information can be used to examine states’ performance over this period and help understand the effects on food stamp participation rates of a strong economy with expanding job opportunities and the very early consequences of welfare reform and food stamp changes that were brought about by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.
This report duplicates the precise methodology of the earlier analysis with more than 10,000 new investigations to generate an estimate for the 1996 - 1998 calendar year period.