E212: Do SNAP work requirements encourage self sufficiency, or hurt those who need help the most?

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is one of the largest poverty alleviation programs in the United States and provides help to around 14% of the US population. Since 1996, the program has required able-bodied adults without dependents to work in order to receive food assistance. Proponents of work requirements say it prevents government dependency. Critics, however, argue work requirements push out the people who need food assistance the most. Today we'll talk with two economists about the impact of SNAP work requirements: University of Rochester's Elena Prager. and Adam Leive at the University of California, Berkeley.

Interview Summary

You two were part of a research team that also included economists from MIT, Harvard, and the University of Maryland and recently published an analysis of the effects of SNAP work requirements in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Adam, before we jump into the study, would you tell our listeners what SNAP work requirements are and how proponents and critics see them?

Adam -   Sure. So, SNAP's work requirements dictate that some recipients must be working, training, or volunteering to receive benefits for more than a few months. So the policy is historically applied to childless adults who are younger than 50 and don't have a disability, and as you mentioned, this group is often referred to as able-bodied adults without dependents and called by their acronym ABAWDs.

So, the work requirement stipulates that ABAWDs must be working 80 hours per month, participating in a qualifying training program or volunteering. If they don't satisfy that requirement, then they're only entitled to three months of SNAP benefits within a three-year period. Counties with high rates of unemployment may temporarily be granted exemptions from the policy by USDA's Food and Nutrition Services as well. So in terms of kind of the proponents and opponents of the policy, those in favor of work requirements are concerned that providing government benefits discourages work. These people generally believe that those recipients of government assistance should work as a condition for that help. Their argument for the policy is that by incentivizing work, people will develop a stronger attachment to the labor market. Eventually they become self-sufficient, and they can earn enough to get by without the government assistance.

By contrast, the critics see work requirements as a policy that prevents people who are economically vulnerable from receiving food assistance, and it prevents them from accessing assistance in times when they need it the most. So, the opponents argue that if the reason people are not working is something other than the economic incentives of the policy, then the work requirements are really just going to cut people's benefits without getting more people to work. It's worth noting that work requirements have long been contentious and most recently were the main issue in the debt ceiling debate. So as part of that compromise, the SNAP work requirements will gradually be applied to ABAWDs up to age 55, but additional groups will now be exempt from the requirement, including veterans, the homeless, and those who are 18 to 24 who were previously in foster care.

I really appreciate how you've brought in the changes to the rules around work requirements under the Inflation Reduction Act. This is going to be an important policy discussion as we move forward. It's interesting, particularly the exemption for individuals who are unhoused because of the work that shows up in the paper that you all have. So Elena, let's now turn to you. How did you study the effect of work requirements in this paper?

Elena - As you might imagine, studying the effect of work requirements on SNAP recipients and potential recipients is actually a little bit tricky. You have to be able to find comparable groups of people, some of whom face work requirements in SNAP and some of whom don't, but are otherwise similar enough to one another that it would make sense to compare their employment trajectories and their use of SNAP. Generally speaking, you don't just directly want to make that comparison across people to whom work requirements apply versus people to whom work requirements don't apply in SNAP becau