32 million Americans face ‘hunger cliff’ as COVID relief expires
The food benefit program, known as SNAP benefits, is set to end this month, which will push approximately 32 million Americans off a “hunger cliff,” according to a report. The pandemic-era saw the expansion of funding for programs that serve low-income Americans, resulting in a significant decrease in poverty rates for both adults and children. However, the era of large-scale funding is mostly ending, with federal grants for housing and childcare expenses, along with a provision for simplified Medicaid enrollment, expected to run out this year.
The SNAP emergency allotments kept 4.2 million people out of poverty, reducing poverty rates for children by 14% in Q4 2021, according to a report published last year. While there are new permanent benefits to come out of the COVID era, including a food benefit called Summer EBT, which will provide $120 per child when school is out to help with groceries, advocates for the poor say they’ve seen more people in those places struggling to buy food.
The enhanced SNAP benefits were enacted in the first pandemic relief bill in March 2020 and made every SNAP recipient eligible for the program’s maximum benefit, which made a huge difference for those who typically only qualify for the minimum amount of food benefits. Kyler Daniels, a mom of a 4-year-old who works in school administration in North Carolina and earns about $3,000 a month in take-home pay, saw her monthly benefits go down from $740 to $125 a month. She says she’s fearful of how she’s going to adjust.
According to Moody’s economist Mark Zandi, putting more money into people’s hands to buy groceries has a stimulative effect on the economy. So cutting these benefits will have a marginal impact on inflation. He expects the cut in SNAP to reduce real GDP in 2023 by .14% and CPI inflation by .07%. Advocates for the poor are more interested in increasing SNAP benefits more broadly, for instance, allowing for more inflation-related increases. However, they’re disappointed in the way the enhanced benefits are ending.
“The COVID era was a time when policymakers made a concerted effort to alleviate hardship. Now we go back to a base level of economic supports that ‘allow very high levels of poverty to remain in the country’,” said Sharon Parrott, President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Poverty is a policy choice in this country,” said Lower-Basch. “For a while we decided we were going to make a different policy choice.”