Data & Research
This report fulfills a Congressional request for the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) to report on "a comprehensive, integrated approach to nutrition education as a complement to the various nutrition assistance programs." FNS reviewed its current nutrition education efforts, and consulted with a wide range of nutrition education experts and stakeholders.
The Food Stamp Program (FSP) 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. However, not all eligible families participate in the program. Some choose not to, while others do not know they are eligible. The participation rate—the ratio of the number of participants to the number of eligibles—reveals the degree to which eligible families participate.
The number of people receiving food stamps fell by over 5.9 million between summer 1994 and summer 1997, with most of the decline occurring in the year between September 1996 and September 1997. This decline occurred during a period of strong economic growth – unemployment fell, inflation stayed low, and the percentage of Americans living in poverty fell slightly. In the same period, Congress enacted and states implemented sweeping reforms to the Food Stamp Program and to the nation’s welfare programs.
This report reviews recent approaches to estimating the numbers of persons eligible for and participating in WIC. It also describes issues concerning these estimates that may be worthy of review and synthesizes research on these issues.
This report explores the feasibility and potential cost of enabling EBT systems to differentiate between program-eligible and ineligible items. It considers the cost of upgrading systems in stores that now have scanners and the cost of installing new systems in stores without scanners. The report also examines the potential for the purchase of ineligible items even with the introduction of new technological controls.
This pamphlet provides estimates for Food Stamp Program participation rates by states. It will be the first widely-released document showing the percentage of eligible people, by state, who actually participate in the program. Because the data are from January 1994, prior to the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, they provide baseline data on participation rates prior to the enactment of welfare reform.
This report provides a comprehensive picture of individuals’ patterns of participation in the Food Stamp Program during the early 1990s, a period of rapid caseload growth. Based on data from the 1990 and 1991 SIPP panels (national longitudinal surveys covering the period from late 1989 to early 1994), the research addresses questions about why individuals enter and leave the FSP, how long participants stay on the program, whether individuals return at a later time and what factors distinguish those who are more dependent on the program from those who are less dependent.
This report presents the latest trends in Food Stamp Program participation rates. It adds one more year of information, 1995, to the series of reports on FSP participation rates based on March Current Population Survey data for eligibles and FSP administrative data for participants. Participation rates are calculated as the percentage of the total eligible population that participate in the FSP.
This report, part of the Food and Consumer Service’s series "Current Perspectives on Food Stamp Program Participation," presents the latest participation rates for the Food Stamp Program (FSP). The participation rate -- the proportion of those eligible for food stamps who actually apply for and receive benefits -- is a valuable policy tool that shows whether the program is reaching the intended population and which groups of the eligible population participate at higher or lower rates than other groups. Estimates of rates are based on Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data for eligibles and FSP administrative data for participants.