Food Stamp Program Essay

The problem of nutrition and poverty has often been looked at by extreme cases such as famine and disaster. However, we can evaluate the use of social policy with the impact of the Food Stamp Program on children in particular and its effect on later life health and economic outcomes. This increase in a relatively small amount of resources can help low income families without the limitations of other programs by group such as disabled, elderly or families headed by women. The importance of the Food Stamp Program was of particular importance during the economic recession when 1 in 7 people received benefits and lifted more that 5 million families out of poverty (USDA, 2012). In 1969, the media put the spotlight on “Hunger in America,” a CBS special news report that showed whites in Virginia, blacks in Alabama, Navajos in Arizona, and …show more content…
In 2015 43.1 million people were in poverty, including 14.5 million children under the age of 18 years old, 42.2 million Americans lived in food-insecure households, including more than 13 million children. In 2015, 59 percent of food insecure households took part in at least one of the federal food assistance programs, 55 percent receive SNAP benefits. For those who participate, food stamps have been found to provide positive benefits in terms of increased consumption or household expenditures in general (Bishop et al., 1996; Wilde et al., 1999; Hoynes et al., 2006), improvements in food intake and quality (Wilde et al., 1999), and increased food security (Gundersen and Oliviera, 2001; Kabbani and Kmeid, 2005). Perhaps the most important aspect of the Food Stamp Program is the expenditure smoothing benefits of the program (Breunig et al., 2001; Gundersen and Ziliak, 2003) and its role as an automatic stabilizer for low-income households in the face of adverse shocks (Mykerezi and Mills,