This report provides a summary of the process undertaken and recommendations made by the CACFP Paperwork Reduction Work Group.
Low participation rates among low-income people eligible for food stamp benefits have prompted a number of outreach and public education efforts. In 2002, the Food and Nutrition Service awarded $5 million in grants to community-based organizations in 15 States to investigate how to increase participation among people eligible for food stamp benefits. The evaluation of these grants describes the features and outcomes of these 18 projects.
Most discussion of payment accuracy in the Food Stamp Program focuses on the overall level and cost of payment errors. Rarely does the discussion focus on the impact of payment errors on individual households affected. This analysis – based on 2003 food stamp quality control data – leads to two broad conclusions. First, virtually all households receiving food stamps are eligible. Thus, the problem of erroneous payments is not so much one of determining eligibility, but rather one of attempting to finely target benefits to the complicated and changing circumstances of low-income households. Second, most overpayments to eligible households are small relative to household income and official poverty standards. As a result, most food stamp households are poor, and they remain poor even when overpaid.
FNS conducted the three-year pilot from SY 2000–2001 through SY 2002–2003. The aim of this pilot was to study the impact of the availability of universal-free school breakfast on breakfast participation and measures related to elementary school students’ nutritional status and academic performance. This pilot was not intended to evaluate the current SBP or the value of consuming breakfast.
To increase its understanding of the reasons for nonparticipation, the Food and Nutrition Service(FNS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) contracted with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) to conduct a study of nonparticipation by low-income working and elderly households, entitled Reaching the Working Poor and Poor Elderly. This report summarizes what was learned and offers recommendations for how a national survey of the reasons for nonparticipation in the FSP should be designed and fielded.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service confirms that use of WIC benefits does not render an alien a public charge, that benefits should not be denied to aliens who have used WIC, and that INS should not request that aliens repay any WIC benefits received.