FNS Documents & Resources

To explore other options for assessing impacts, FNS awarded a contract to provide FNS with new information on: experiences and satisfaction of participants in FNS programs, and impacts of program participation on food security, diet quality, and other indicators of household well-being.

The provisions of the final rule entitled, Child and Adult Care Food Program: Increasing the Duration of Tiering Determinations for Day Care Homes, published on Feb. 22, 2005, at 70 FR 8501, could not become effective until approval of the associated information collection requirements by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Those requirements were cleared by OMB on Aug. 18, 2005 under OMB Control Number 0584-0055. This document announces the effective date of the provisions contained in the originally-published rule.

This final rule revises Food Stamp Program regulations pertaining to the standards for approval of Electronic Benefits Transfer systems, the participation of retail food stores and wholesale food concerns, and the state agency liabilities and Federal sanctions.

This is the first of a series of annual reports which will assess the administrative error associated with school food authorities’ approval of applications for free and reduced-price school meals. More than 95 percent of students who were approved for benefits on the basis of an application were receiving correct benefits, based on the information in the application files. In school year 2004/05, 3.5 percent of all students who submitted an application for free/reduced-price meal benefits had an administrative error in the processing of their applications.

This interim rule amends the regulations governing the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children to strengthen vendor cost containment.

This document announces the effective date of the information collection provisions contained in the originally-published rule.

This report is the latest in a series of publications presenting estimates of the percentage of eligible persons, by state, who participate in the Food Stamp Program. The participation rate – a ratio of the number of participants to the number of people eligible for benefits – is an important measure of program performance. 

FNS and other researchers have used a variety of approaches to calculate food stamp participation rates. While different approaches can look similar in concept, the results – for particular states or for the nation as a whole – can often look quite different. These differences can be confusing for users who seek to describe the success of the Food Stamp Program without becoming experts in statistics and data analysis. This paper provides an overview and comparison of two sets of estimates produced by FNS as indicators of Food Stamp Program performance.

Using Food Stamp Quality Control data from fiscal year 2000, this analysis suggests that the simplified reporting policies adopted by states in 2004 could have lowered error rates by 1.2 to 1.5 percentage points.

This rule proposes to amend the Food Stamp Program regulations to implement certain discretionary provisions concerning the quality control system in Sections 4118 and 4119 of the Food Stamp Reauthorization Act of 2002.