On May 19, the Urban Institute released a new brief, Recent Trends in Food Stamp Participation: Have New Policies Made a Difference? Using data from the 1997, 1999, and 2002 rounds of the National Survey of America’s Families, the report attributes increasing Food Stamp Program (FSP) participation rates to recent changes in FSP policies.
The brief focuses on the relationship between recent cash welfare participation and FSP participation. Recent legislation has simplified the process for obtaining FSP benefits and has made retaining eligibility easier for former welfare recipients. The new policies focus mainly on helping poor families with some connection to the cash welfare system. In contrast to the rising participation rates of former welfare recipients, only about 25% of families with incomes below one-half of the federal poverty line who have no connection to the cash welfare system participated in FSP from 1997 to 2002.
The brief discusses ways in which to increase outreach to poor families that are not in the welfare system. A copy of the publication is available on the Urban Institute web site at: http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=310995.