What is SNAP?

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, once upon a time called food stamps, helps nearly 42 million Americans every month. While the 2025 government shutdown showed us what happens when SNAP dries up, we have yet to see the effects of major new legislative changes to the program. So what, exactly, is SNAP? How does it work? Who gets it? Why do we have it to begin with, and what does it look like now? Our guide is Sara Bleich, Professor of Public Health Policy at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Hannah McCarthy?

  Nick, we talk a lot about the citizenry. We, the people, constituents. And those are important terms, but also sweeping terms that I think can, on occasion, paint flesh and blood humans as an abstract idea or a philosophy. But whatever an American is, there is a body representing that American. And that body requires food, water, nutrients for survival, without which there would be no body politic.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  It's important to remember who participates in SNAP and what SNAP actually achieves.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, serves nearly 42 million people every month.

• 0:49Speaker 03

  That includes Samantha Bandy. She's a working, single mother with a medical condition, trying to balance a job while raising her children and struggling to make ends meet.

• 0:56Speaker 04

  Because I'm like, I'm already struggling. I'm already stretching for food.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  The vast majority of SNAP participants are children with working parents and the elderly and the disabled.

• 1:06Speaker 05

  The Trump administration announced it's ending the US annual report on food insecurity and hunger in America.

• 1:20Hannah McCarthy?

  This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

• 1:22Speaker 06

  I'm Nick Capodice.

• 1:23Hannah McCarthy?

  And today, we are talking about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka SNAP. It's a program that was in the news a lot during the latest and longest ever government shutdown. And then the government opened back up, and lo and behold, we're not hearing so much about it anymore.

• 1:45Hannah McCarthy?

  It may be out of the headlines, but SNAP is still very much something to pay attention to. So we're going to talk about what it is, what it's for, and what is happening to it.

• 1:56Speaker 07

  My name is Sarah Bleish. I'm a professor of public health policy at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and I do research around food insecurity and health inequities, really trying to use available evidence to drive policy.

• 2:09Hannah McCarthy?

  I wanted to start off by understanding why we have and need programs like SNAP. And for that, we have to understand food insecurity.

• 2:19Speaker 07

  So food insecurity is an economic definition, and it's defined as limited or uncertain access to food based on your resources. And so if you look at the most available data, which is coming from the Household Food Insecurity Report, 47 million people live in households that are experiencing food insecurity. So it impacts about 1 in 8 Americans.

• 2:40Hannah McCarthy?

  A lot of factors go into food insecurity. So we're talking about income, employment, race and ethnicity, disabilities. And then there are neighborhood conditions, access to transportation, literal, physical access to food.

• 2:55Speaker 06

  So if you live in a neighborhood without a full supermarket, for example, and you don't have the means or the ability to leave that neighborhood to get what you need.

• 3:03Hannah McCarthy?

  And let's say there is a convenience store nearby, and you might say, OK, great. But convenience stores often have higher prices compared to supermarkets.

• 3:11Speaker 06

  The price of convenience.

• 3:13Hannah McCarthy?

  And they might not have the quality or variety of food you need to be healthy and sated long term. So you get the picture. Someone can experience food insecurity for any number of reasons, and millions of Americans do.

• 3:27Speaker 06

  And the way the federal government tries to address that problem is SNAP?

• 3:32Hannah McCarthy?

  One of the ways.

• 3:33Speaker 07

  So SNAP stands for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It used to be called food stamps. And the US Department of Agriculture runs a suite of 16 different federal nutrition assistance programs. Of that suite, SNAP is by far the largest. It's funded by the federal government through the Farm Bill, and it's administered by states.

• 3:53Speaker 06

  Hang on, the Farm Bill?

• 3:55Hannah McCarthy?

  The Farm Bill is a law. Congress typically renews it every five or six years. It's an omnibus that supports a whole range of stuff related to agriculture. So we're talking farm credits, trade, horticulture, forestry, and food assistance programs like SNAP.

• 4:14Hannah McCarthy?

  The first farm bill was called the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.

• 4:19Speaker 06

  All right, 1933, so four years into the Great Depression, three years into the Dust Bowl.

• 4:25Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, and to complicate matters, we had a food surplus.

• 4:29Speaker 06

  Hold on, Hina. I think Great Depression and Dust Bowl, and I think long breadlines and ruined farms. I think famine, not feast.

• 4:38Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, during World War I, Europe's agriculture production tanked. US farmers were encouraged to overproduce food for export, take out loans to buy more land and equipment. There was a US agricultural boom. And what typically comes after a boom, Nick?

• 4:55Speaker 06

  A bust. In this case, a bust with dust.

• 4:59Hannah McCarthy?

  Farmers are in debt. US crop prices have dropped as European farms come back to life. Then there's this cycle of produce more food so you can pay off your debts. But then the more food there is, the lower the prices get. And then, you know, Great Depression. So even though we have all this food, nobody has enough money to buy it, even though the prices are so low. So the government starts passing farm bills to help out farmers. But you still have all these hungry people across the nation, and you still have a food surplus.

• 5:29Speaker 07

  SNAP, as we talked about, was originally called the Food Stamp Program. And it was actually created way back, six decades ago in 1939, during the Great Depression. And it was designed, the original program, to address two problems. One was that there are huge food surpluses around the country at farms. The other is that there was widespread hunger among the unemployed. And so the original Food Stamp Program worked by allowing families who had low income to buy orange stamps for food and receive blue stamps for free to buy surplus foods. Now, the original program was planned to reach about 20 million people. It operated for about four years and then was discontinued in 1943 because the economic conditions of the Great Depression began to improve.

• 6:14Speaker 06

  So you could buy one kind of food stamp and get another kind of food stamp for free?

• 6:19Hannah McCarthy?

  Right. Orange for anything on the shelves, blue for surplus.

• 6:23Speaker 06

  Wow. What counted as surplus?

• 6:26Hannah McCarthy?

  Any number of things that were the result of overproduction. So like flour, butter, eggs, oranges, beans.

• 6:34Speaker 06

  But then the grocery stores are left holding the stamps.

• 6:37Hannah McCarthy?

  Which they could then exchange for money at the bank.

• 6:39Speaker 06

  Okay, and then, once things stabilized, they stopped the program. But that doesn't mean food insecurity went away.

• 6:46Hannah McCarthy?

  You are correct on that one. So after a couple of decades of proposed legislation and studies and reports and pilot programs.

• 6:54Speaker 07

  The program became permanent with the Food Stamp Act of 1964, which was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. And then, in 1977, Congress passed legislation that eliminated the requirement for recipients to pay for their stamps, which made the program that much more accessible. And it became nationwide in the early 1970s, in 1974. And then, to increase the ability for participants to use their benefits just like everybody else, in 1990, Congress authorized the use of EBT cards to replace that paper stamp system, the food stamp system. And then the program was renamed in 2008 to SNAP. And that renaming was really to reduce the stigma that was associated with having those food stamps

• 7:37Speaker 07

  and to better reflect the program's focus on nutrition.

• 7:40Speaker 06

  Okay, so SNAP is the rebranding of the food stamp program because it reduces stigma and supplementary nutrition assistance is, especially by 2008, a more accurate description.

• 7:53Hannah McCarthy?

  Bingo. So here's how it's designed.

• 7:57Speaker 07

  Importantly, the program is designed to be countercyclical. And what that means is that as you are in times of economic downturn, so think COVID-19 or the Great Recession, enrollment is going to increase. And then, as the economy improves, enrollment is going to decrease.

• 8:12Speaker 06

  Wait, but how does Congress know if enrollment is going to go up or down? How do they predict that?

• 8:17Speaker 07

  So it's actually built into the design of the program. And so, when COVID happened, there was no need to go back to Congress and say, "We need more money" because the program was designed to do exactly what I'm describing, which is the program is designed to get bigger as the economy worsens and it's designed to get smaller as the economy improves. So that is built in to how the SNAP program was developed.

• 8:38Hannah McCarthy?

  Sarah explains that the average monthly household SNAP benefit is $332. That's about $177 per person.

• 8:47Speaker 07

  So to qualify for benefits, participants have to meet certain eligibility standards, and that's based on a number of things: their income, their assets, their household size, their immigration status, and proof of employment. And so when it comes to income, a household's gross monthly income has to be at or below 130% of poverty, and that specific amount is going to vary depending on the household size. So if we, for example, take a three-person household, in 2025, they would have to have a monthly income, a gross monthly income of $2,798 or less to be considered at or below 130% of the poverty line. And the benefit itself is based on something called the Thrifty Food Plan, which is essentially

• 9:30Speaker 07

  a calculator which determines the SNAP benefit amount.

• 9:33Speaker 06

  The Thrifty Food Plan?

• 9:35Hannah McCarthy?

  Yes. I encourage any curious listeners to look this up. The U.S. Department of Agriculture comes up with a breakdown of what it should cost to buy food for a, quote, "nutritious, practical, cost-effective diet prepared at home per your, quote, age, sex, group." You've got bracket breakdowns for children between 1 and 11 years old, and men and women between 12 and 71 years old.

• 9:59Speaker 06

  I have so many questions about so many elements of that.

• 10:03Hannah McCarthy?

  The Thrifty Food Plan has been questioned on many points having to do with wide variations in the cost of healthy food across the country, time and resources for preparing food, the availability of that food at the grocery store, the rainbow of dietary needs and restrictions depending on your personal human body, et cetera. But that is what they use.

• 10:21Speaker 07

  And then, if you're eligible, the way that you apply is you apply in the state where you currently live, because the program is state-administered. So the money comes from the federal government, for the most part, and then it's administered by the states. And this can be done online, by mail, or in person. And then, once you're approved for SNAP, you receive what's called an electronic benefit transfer card, or an EBT card. And this essentially is a debit card, and it can be used at more than 250,000 approved stores around the country. And every month, benefits are loaded onto the card by the state.

• 10:53Hannah McCarthy?

  So you can use that money to buy just about everything you can consume at the grocery store, except for alcohol, nicotine, hot prepared foods, non-food items like toilet paper, household cleaners, et cetera, pet food, or medicine, vitamin, and supplements.

• 11:09Speaker 06

  So you can't use supplemental nutrition assistance to buy nutritional supplements?

• 11:14Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, the word "play" wasn't lost on me.

• 11:16Speaker 06

  All right, and as you mentioned at the beginning of the episode, Hannah, everyone was talking about SNAP for a while because during the recent and longest ever government shutdown, it ran out of funding.

• 11:27Hannah McCarthy?

  It did.

• 11:28Speaker 06

  And now the government's back, and so is SNAP.

• 11:31Hannah McCarthy?

  Putting it very simply, yes, the government is running in part via a continuing resolution that ends on January 30th, 2026.

• 11:39Speaker 06

  Which is two months from when we're making this episode.

• 11:41Hannah McCarthy?

  It is, and the government is in part running via a continuing appropriation that funds, among other things, the Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP. That continuing appropriation carries through September 30th, 2026.

• 12:00Speaker 06

  But what happened during the shutdown? We have had government shutdowns in the past, but I don't remember hearing that SNAP recipients were ever at risk.

• 12:08Hannah McCarthy?

  That is because in the past, SNAP was funded, even during shutdowns.

• 12:13Speaker 06

  How does that work?

• 12:14Hannah McCarthy?

  Contingency funds.

• 12:16Speaker 07

  You can use this fund, called a contingency fund, to pay for those benefits, which has been used in past administrations to ensure that SNAP participants receive their benefits in times of shutdown. And that's been done by Republican administrations, and it's been done by Democratic administrations.

• 12:31Hannah McCarthy?

  By the way, I interviewed Sarah during the government shutdown, so you will hear her refer to certain things in the present tense. But what Sarah is talking about here is the fact that the executive branch can make, and in the past has made, the decision to fund SNAP using money that has specifically been put aside to fund necessary programs in the event that the government cannot do it the normal way, aka a budget. Now during the most recent shutdown, the Trump administration refused to do that. So a bunch of states sued.

• 13:02Speaker 07

  So then, the judges ruled that the Trump administration had to cover the benefits. And the Trump administration said, we can do about half. Because that contingency fund has about $4.5 billion in it. And the cost of funding benefits for the month of November is about $8 billion. The story continues. A federal judge came back, another one, and said, you have to make participants whole. There is another pot of money that sits within an agency called the Food Nutrition Service. And agencies have the legal authority to transfer money across accounts. And so within that suite of nutrition assistance programs, there's SNAP, which we're talking about. But there's also child nutrition, which right now is flush with money and has about $30 billion in its account.

• 13:46Speaker 07

  So it would be very easy for money to be moved from that account over to SNAP to make participants whole for the month of November, in no way jeopardizing the child nutrition programs like school meals.

• 13:57Hannah McCarthy?

  So again, as of right now, SNAP is back. It is fully funded. People are receiving their full allotment. SNAP has all but vanished from the headlines. But this battle over food assistance revealed exactly how much of a balancing act life is for so many people in this country.

• 14:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, first and foremost, I want to talk about the families. Because this scenario creates a huge amount of stress for families. And they are going to be required to make very difficult trade offs. But another thing that happens at the beginning of each month is rent is due. And so you potentially don't have your SNAP benefit. Your rent is due. And you then have to make very difficult trade offs. Do I pay for my medication? Do I pay for my rent? Do I pay for food? That is really hard. And for 20% of SNAP participants, there is no other source of income. So these families are really in a tough spot. So then what happens? Well, then there becomes increasing demand on the charitable food sector and the emergency food sector. And we are seeing that around the country. Lines at food banks are becoming increasingly long. But there's a capacity problem.

• 14:58Speaker 07

  So for every meal that a food bank serves, SNAP serves nine more. And it's just not possible for the charitable food sector to completely fill the gap that is left by the federal government. If whole payments are not made and if there's a delay in those whole payments being made. Another thing is that SNAP is supporting hundreds of thousands of local stores. And so if that money is not flowing into local stores, or flowing into local stores in part, that can potentially lead to layoffs. And of course, all of this has health implications because SNAP reduces food insecurity. If food insecurity goes up, that's linked to all sorts of chronic health conditions. So think diabetes and blood pressure, high blood pressure.

• 15:42Speaker 07

  And so there's lots of ways that restricting or cutting these health benefits are going to hurt real people from a stress perspective, are going to hurt real people from a health outcome perspective, are going to have a negative impact on businesses, and tax a charitable food system that is just not equipped to fill in the gap.

• 16:02Speaker 06

  I never considered that domino effect. But of course, you take support from one part of the system, and the pressure is on for all of these other parts that are not equipped to handle it.

• 16:13Hannah McCarthy?

  And just because SNAP is now funded, at least through next year, that doesn't mean the pressure is off.

• 16:20Speaker 06

  Say what now?

• 16:21Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, I'll say it after the break. But before that break, if you are increasingly noticing how very systematic this whole system is, how departments and programs and laws and leaders are part of an interconnected organism that we call the United States government, and you want to know what exactly the component parts are supposed to be doing, just in case they, you know, stop, you can find a great many explainers, as in hundreds of them, on our website, civics101podcast.org.

• 16:59Speaker 08

  Democracy under siege, Democrats treading water, and one outlet after another checking out.

• 17:05Speaker 09

  All the big media giants are willing to fold.

• 17:09Speaker 08

  Slate has never been afraid to tell it like it is and hold powerful feet to the fire.

• 17:15Speaker 10

  We want to try to defend our communities, our families, our people.

• 17:19Speaker 08

  But what if you can't? What Next asks tough questions without forgetting who's at the center of our work: you. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:31Nick Capodice?

  Have any of you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once, and they keep working in the background.

• 18:16Nick Capodice?

  You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

• 18:37Nick Capodice?

  Holiday season is coming, and I don't think I have to tell you this might be a tough one because things are expensive in the fall of 2026. Everyone I know is looking for ways to make a little extra money, prowling around the side hustle subreddits. But I will say, if you're looking to sell something, to launch a store fast before the holiday rush, Shopify is the one-stop-shop platform for making a professional-looking store without touching a line of code. You can sell anything, and you can sell it anywhere that people shop online. You can have it done in minutes, and you can launch before Black Friday, that time of year when more people are already shopping and ready to buy.

• 19:21Nick Capodice?

  So if you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/civics to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/civics. Just go to Shopify.com/civics today to hear your first...

• 19:42Hannah McCarthy?

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• 20:27Hannah McCarthy?

  the fall pieces you will reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Civics 101. It's a great way to support the show.

• 20:59Speaker 06

  We're back. We're talking about SNAP, what it is, what happened to it recently, what it means for millions of people, et cetera. And Hannah, before the break, you said that despite the return of full SNAP funding, there might be something else going on with this program that the pressure might not be off?

• 21:17Hannah McCarthy?

  Not might and not may. Most definitely.

• 21:20Speaker 07

  One of the things that we're seeing happen right now is that there are huge changes through the one big, beautiful bill act to the SNAP program. And there's a whole lot of confusion. And this happens anytime there's a massive shift in policy. And so what that can do for families is it can really have a dampening effect on their willingness to apply, because they may assume that they're not qualified, even if they might actually be eligible for the program.

• 21:43Speaker 06

  The quote-unquote "one big, beautiful bill" changed SNAP?

• 21:47Hannah McCarthy?

  It sure did.

• 21:50Speaker 07

  So with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, there were a number of major changes to SNAP. So one is that the overall program was cut by $186 billion through 2034. And that's about a 20% reduction in the program, which is the largest decrease in the history. What that means practically is that millions of people, including many children, are going to lose all or a substantial amount of their benefits. And we know from a huge amount of evidence that SNAP helps reduce food insecurity. And so this change is going to mean that food insecurity is going to increase. The other thing that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act did is it created stricter work requirements. So for the first time ever, the SNAP work requirements include

• 22:33Speaker 07

  parents of school-aged children over 14 and older adults ages 55 through 64. These individuals have to work 20 hours per week or they can only receive SNAP benefits for three months out of a three-year period.

• 22:48Speaker 06

  So Sarah said SNAP work requirements now include this other group of people. So did work requirements already exist?

• 22:56Hannah McCarthy?

  They did. This new law means that more people are going to have to meet them.

• 23:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, so the work requirement is 20 hours per week. And one of the things that we know from lots and lots of research about work requirements across various programs is that people who can work, do work. And right now, we are in an economy where there's not a whole lot of jobs available. So a work requirement is being introduced. There's not a whole lot of jobs. People can't find jobs who are on SNAP. And then what that means is they can only receive SNAP benefits for three months out of a three-year period if they're subject to this requirement. And so what all the estimates are suggesting is that as a result of the work requirement, hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of people, are going to fall off the SNAP rolls.

• 23:41Hannah McCarthy?

  And it's not just that fewer people are going to be eligible. When you introduce a new requirement, you introduce a new process, something that has to be tracked and verified.

• 23:51Speaker 07

  Now, the individuals have to work the 20 hours per week. They have to document the 20 hours. And they have to share that with the state, who then has to record it. And so it creates this enormous paperwork burden.

• 24:03Hannah McCarthy?

  While we're on the subject of the states, SNAP is, as we have said, something that is funded by the federal government and at the very top, administered by the USDA. But states do a ton of work to administer this program as well. And that comes at a cost that is about to get a lot higher.

• 24:19Speaker 07

  Another important thing that happens is through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is that starting in fiscal year 27, states will have to cover a higher percentage of administrative costs of the program. Historically, states have paid 50%, but with the change from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states will have to pay 75% of administrative costs. And then one other big change that's happening is with respect to the shifting of costs to states is that beginning in FY28, or fiscal year 28, states will actually have to pay a portion of the benefit itself, which is the really big price part of the SNAP program. That's what costs them most money. And that's going to be based on their error rate.

• 24:59Speaker 07

  So for example, a state will be required to pay 10% of SNAP benefits if they have an error rate which ranges between 8% and less than 10%. And the error rate is referring to to what extent are participants being underpaid for their benefit or overpaid for their benefit.

• 25:18Speaker 06

  Hang on. Let me just make sure I understand this, Hannah. Basically, Sarah is saying that sometimes states give recipients too much money and sometimes they give them too little money?

• 25:30Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, and the USDA has been tracking those rates for years. The national average error rate was nearly 11% in 2024. Starting in 2028, if states make mistakes in 6% or more of their payments, they are essentially going to be penalized. They'll have to start covering up to 15% of SNAP payments in that state.

• 25:54Speaker 06

  In other words, if they make enough mistakes, they're going to get less money from the government.

• 25:58Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 07

  And so if you look at that more concretely, North Carolina had an error rate that was a little over 10% in FY24. So their benefits that they received were about $3 billion. So 15% of that is $450 million. So these are real costs that states are going to have to absorb, beginning in the not-too-distant future, if their error rate is on the higher side.

• 26:21Hannah McCarthy?

  By the way, as of last year's data, only seven states had an error rate low enough to get that full funding. So you're looking at a combination of states having to cover more administrative costs and having to significantly improve the accuracy of that administrative work.

• 26:37Speaker 07

  One other thing that's important to know about a change in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is it eliminates a program called SNAP education, which is the largest nutrition education program in the country. And what it does is it helps individuals on a limited budget to prepare food. And so that program has been zeroed out and will no longer be available.

• 26:57Hannah McCarthy?

  The new changes to SNAP will also limit eligibility for certain lawfully-present non-citizens who were previously eligible for SNAP, including refugee and asylum seekers legally in the United States. Undocumented immigrants are not now and never have been eligible for SNAP. Now, the current Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, has stated that the USDA uncovered, quote, "massive fraud" in the SNAP program. She cited 118 arrests and the removal of, quote, "almost 700,000 people" from the program. But lawyers and political scientists who analyze SNAP data are skeptical and point out that a hundred-some-odd arrests in a program of 42 million recipients is a drop

• 27:41Hannah McCarthy?

  in the bucket, and that removing people from the program is likelier because of these new legislative changes. And looking at these changes more broadly, Sarah sees a common theme.

• 27:52Speaker 07

  There is certainly a posture in this administration towards self-sufficiency, meaning moving individuals from safety net programs off of safety net programs. And that's the big push behind many of the changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

• 28:10Speaker 06

  You know Hannah, self-sufficiency has long been an American thing. Bootstraps, right? By the way, I recommend our listeners check out your episodes on American myths, specifically on the myth of the self-made man, for more on that. And this is just not a prevailing philosophy in other countries, so I'm wondering how we compare. We are not the only nation with people who need to eat, but don't have the money to do it.

• 28:35Speaker 07

  So if you compare the United States to other high-income countries, you look at food insecurity, and you look at how they're dealing with it, there's a fundamental difference, which is, in the US, there is higher investment in the consequences of food insecurity, as opposed to the upfront investment in children and families. So what that means practically is that in the US, we are paying for food insecurity in the form of higher healthcare costs and other costs, once it occurs, but we're not doing enough front-end investment. And so, an example of an effective investment in children and families is something called the universal child allowance. And what that is, is a stable source of cash income to families with young children.

• 29:18Speaker 07

  There is a version of this that has been implemented in several countries, including Canada, and Germany, and the UK, and it has been shown to significantly reduce food insecurity. So there are other models that we can look to that take a more preventive approach, that might help us, over the long term, pull down our rates of food insecurity. What I can say is that, from a societal perspective, as a country, the US spends much, much more money on healthcare than it does on prevention. And so, the fact that we are really paying for the consequences of food insecurity, once they show up in the healthcare system, is very similar to how we deal with a lot of other issues. And so, a shift toward a more preventative approach would require a real shift in terms of how we think

• 30:02Speaker 07

  about where investments can make a big difference. And with a congress that turns over so quickly, it's frankly harder to get commitments to make those big, long-term investments.

• 30:11Nick Capodice?

  Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name? Like, actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over, so your info doesn't just pop right back up.

• 30:53Nick Capodice?

  You set it up once, and they keep working in the background. You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code CIVICS at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

• 31:18Nick Capodice?

  Holiday season is coming, and I don't think I have to tell you this might be a tough one because things are expensive in the fall of 2026. Everyone I know is looking for ways to make a little extra money, prowling around the side hustle subreddits. But I will say, if you're looking to sell something, to launch a store fast before the holiday rush, Shopify is the one-stop-shop platform for making a professional-looking store without touching a line of code. You can sell anything, and you can sell it anywhere that people shop online. You can have it done in minutes, and you can launch before Black Friday, that time of year when more people are already shopping and ready to buy.

• 32:02Nick Capodice?

  So if you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/civics to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/civics. Just go to Shopify.com/civics today to hear your first...

• 32:22Hannah McCarthy?

  While we're on the subject, Nick, I wanted to know how specifically people argue for SNAP and how they argue against it. It's hard to argue with "everybody's gotta eat." How we get that done exactly, that's the question.

• 32:35Speaker 07

  So in support of SNAP, there are four main arguments. One is that it is the nation's most important anti-hunger program, and it serves 42 million Americans each month. There are mountains of evidence that shows that SNAP lifts families out of poverty, it reduces food insecurity, and it is a counter-cyclical program, so it's expanding during times of economic downturn, and it's reducing as the economy improves. And it also is helping to boost local economies. So every dollar invested in SNAP is generating about a dollar and a half in additional economic activity. And in fact, because of that, and because SNAP is one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus, because the money is spent right when it's received, it was used during the Great Recession to really try to boost the economy.

• 33:24Speaker 07

  But then you'll hear arguments on the other side. So what do you hear for why SNAP benefits shouldn't be provided? Some conservative critics argue that the program encourages dependence rather than self-sufficiency, although the evidence says that pretty much all those who can work do. And so people that are taking advantage of the program are using it to supplement the income in large part that they already have coming into the household. Another criticism that you'll hear is that the program costs are going up, and that's true. You know, between 2019 and 2023, the program costs roughly doubled. But that was also a time when there was a lot of temporary pandemic relief for COVID. There was a permanent boost to the overall size of the program, and it increases with inflation. And even

• 34:06Speaker 07

  with all those changes, we still know that the average benefit is not enough to afford a modest meal in 99% of counties.

• 34:16Speaker 07

  A fourth area of criticism that you'll hear about SNAP is that, well, people that receive SNAP benefits have higher obesity risk. The evidence on this is very mixed, with most studies pointing to null or negative findings. And then the final thing is that some conservative critics will argue that SNAP has a lot of fraud. And actually, SNAP has very low administrative costs, with the overwhelming majority of money going to benefits that help pay participants to buy food. And relative to other safety net programs, the fraud rate in SNAP is particularly low.

• 34:48Speaker 06

  Something that Sarah just said, that the average benefit is not enough to afford a modest meal. So whether you're for SNAP or against it, are we talking about a program that doesn't actually provide enough money to get enough food?

• 35:06Speaker 07

  So from my perspective, and people might argue this point, but from my perspective, no. SNAP benefits are not sufficient for most recipients. And here's the main reasons I would give. One is that many families, and that's about 80%, are using up their SNAP benefit within two weeks of receiving it. And so for the second two weeks of the month, then they could have increased food insecurity. Another is that the average SNAP benefit is approximately $1.40 per person per meal, which, if you just think about that, that for many families is insufficient for a nutritious diet. And in fact, there was a study that was recently done, which found that SNAP benefits do not cover the cost of a modest meal in 99% of US counties.

• 35:50Speaker 07

  And the final reason why I would argue that SNAP benefits are not sufficient is it is intended, the benefit itself is intended to be supplemental. That's why it is called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But that said, there are 20% of households who are in SNAP that have no other source of income.

• 36:12Hannah McCarthy?

  We started this conversation, Nick, by talking about people. There are a lot of numbers, a lot of arguments, and a lot of documents in the SNAP story. But what about the human beings who need food and cannot afford it? Given all of these changes, all of the chaos, everything that the government shut down taught us about food insecurity in the United States, what can people do if they're hearing this and thinking, where do I go from here?

• 36:39Speaker 07

  One important place is the food banks often have people on the ground that are helping with information and helping individuals navigate. That's one place. Another place is the state agency. So because SNAP is federally funded and state-administered, everyone has to go to their state to understand what are the changes that are happening. And so the state agencies can help provide information. I will say, though, that because of the reductions in force that have been happening, the state agencies may not be as well-staffed as they were, you know, a year ago. And that may increase hold times. And so I would say that if you know of resources, you need to connect people with resources that are available in their local community. Help people understand where they can go to understand if they're eligible.

• 37:24Speaker 07

  And again, it's probably going to be in a charitable food sector, going to the state agency. But trying to help the information flow is going to be really, really important because confusion is very high. And then, the way that this is going to be implemented at the state level is going to also be very instructive of the impact on participants. Some states may implement, like the work requirement, for example, more efficiently than others. And that could be something as simple as, how hard is the paperwork to navigate when it comes to the work requirement? The easier it is, the more people are going to stay on the program.

• 38:01Hannah McCarthy?

  I know this episode has been pretty numbers-heavy. So in the event those were not helpful, I will leave you with a couple that might be. You can call 8663-HUNGRY, that's 8663-H-U-N-G-R-Y, or 8778-HAMBRAY, that's 8778-H-A-M-B-R-E, to reach the National Hunger Hotline and access free food near you. Oh, and one more thing.

• 38:27Speaker 07

  So I am a SNAP baby, and I always take opportunities to tell people that about why I care so much about the program and how I really understand the real world impact. So I'm happy to say that if it's helpful.

• 38:45Hannah McCarthy?

  That does it for this episode. It was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with help from Nick Capodice. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Marina Hanke is our producer. Music in this episode comes from Epidemic Sound. You can apply for SNAP at your local SNAP office. To find out where that is, go to fns.usda.gov. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

• 39:17Speaker 12

  Behind every success story, there are vulnerable moments and difficult lessons. My new podcast, Confession, pulls back the curtain so that you can hear those lessons directly from tech veterans like Satya Nadella, Dara Khazar Shahi, and more. I'm Ali Partovi, and I've had my share of painful learnings. I once screwed up a $50 million negotiation with Steve Jobs. I had so much shame after losing that deal, it was 10 years before I could share the whole story. Today, I run NEO, a venture fund and mentorship community for startup founders. Follow my new podcast, Confession, with Ali Partovi, wherever you get your podcasts.