This study is a follow-up to the 2024 Alternative Approaches to Reevaluating the Thrifty Food Plan report and implements the alternative approaches in a series of test cases to provide detailed information on the feasibility of each option.
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.
This report explores different approaches to reevaluating the Thrifty Food Plan, which represents a low-cost, nutritious diet comprised of foods and beverages consumed at home and is used to calculate SNAP benefit amounts.
The Statewide Thrifty Food Plan Cost Estimate for Hawaii report describes the process used to calculate a new Thrifty Food Plan cost estimate for Hawaii that is based on the best currently available food price data from throughout the state of Hawaii in alignment with the proposed rule. This report uses the same peer-reviewed methodology as the Thrifty Food Plan Cost Estimates for Alaska and Hawaii report, published by FNS in 2023.
FNS recently released a new report on SNAP household characteristics for fiscal year (FY) 2022.
This analysis helps to estimate the nutritional quality of the 2022 FDPIR food package 'as offered' using the Healthy Eating Index scoring algorithm. This will provide an update to the first HEI estimate of the 2014 FDPIR food package. The project also aims to estimate the HEIs of the food packages 'as delivered' to participants.
This study evaluated the implications of online SNAP benefit redemption on program integrity. In addition, the study gathered basic information about online benefit redemption, including the use in urban and rural settings.
This study examines the use of robotic process automation technologies by three state agencies—Georgia, New Mexico, and Connecticut—to administer SNAP.