By The State of Obesity, September 8, 2019
A proposed rule from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that would eliminate the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)’s broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE) would cause SNAP households in 39 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands to lose program eligibility, according to an impact assessment conducted by Mathematica. The analysis, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, finds that more than 10 percent of SNAP households in 20 states would lose eligibility, including 18 percent of SNAP households in Wisconsin; 17 percent of SNAP households in North Dakota; 16 percent of SNAP households in Delaware, Iowa, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington; and 15 percent of SNAP households in Minnesota and Texas. Nearly 1 in 10 SNAP households nationwide—equal to 3.6 million people in the 2016 SNAP caseload—are slated to lose eligibility under the proposed rule.
The state-by-state data was released via an interactive data visualization,“Impact of Proposed Policy Changes to SNAP Categorical Eligibility by State,”which uses SNAP quality control data from fiscal year 2016 and microsimulation modeling to provide detailed information on the demographic characteristics of those at risk of losing benefits. For example, in Texas, which has the highest number of households (233,195, equal to 389,342 people in its 2016 SNAP caseload) slated to lose benefits under the proposed rule:
171,696 households (74 percent of households slated to lose benefits) live in poverty.
65,983 households (28 percent of households slated to lose benefits) include children.
108,230 households (46 percent of households slated to lose benefits) include an elderly adult.
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