Multiple ideas for achieving this reduction have been put forward, such as rolling back the 2021 update to the Department of Agriculture's Thrifty Food Plan, establishing new work requirements or ending SNAP eligibility entirely for certain participants.
In Texas, the program supports more than 1.6 million families made up of over 3.5 million residents, about half of whom are children. United Way of Greater Houston's four-county service area (Fort Bend, Harris, Montgomery and Waller counties) accounts for approximately 22% of all SNAP cases in the state — or about 350,000 households receiving benefits — and those four counties also account for 22% of the state’s entire population. Among residents who receive SNAP benefits in the Houston community, more than half (51%) are children under the age of 18 and 11% are older adults 65 and over.
SNAP makes food more affordable
SNAP is a needs-based program that helps make food more affordable for people who meet certain income restrictions. Benefits are paid in full by the federal government, with administrative costs shared equally between states and the federal government.
To qualify for SNAP benefits, a single person can only earn $2,005 per month, and a family of three can earn up to $3,419 per month. To translate that to annual earnings: A single-person household must earn less than $24,060 to be eligible, and a family of three must earn less than $41,028. Both of these amounts are well below the median household income for the Houston region (about $80,000).
SNAP benefits are calculated based on the Thrifty Food Plan, which outlines nutrient-dense foods and beverages, their amounts and associated costs that can be purchased on a limited budget to support a healthy diet through nutritious meals and snacks.
According to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission website, if a household has one person who qualifies for SNAP benefits, they can receive a maximum of $291 per month. If a household has two people who qualify, they can receive a maximum of $535 (or about $268 per qualified person), and if there are three people who qualify, the maximum is $766 (or about $255 per qualified person). Additional qualifying household members increase the maximum amount.
In reality, households receive much less.
For example, in Fort Bend County in March, the average monthly SNAP payment was just $383 per household even though the average household had 2.2 eligible people — meaning households received only about 70% of the maximum benefit. Similarly, in Harris County, the average SNAP payment was $392 per household even though the average household had 2.1 eligible people; in Montgomery County, the average payment was $393 per household even though the average household had 2.3 eligible people; and in Waller County, the average payment was $358 per household even though the average household had 2.1 eligible people.
Many of these residents already not receiving the maximum SNAP benefits now stand to receive even less.
The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., calculated for every county in the country the resulting gap between the cost of a modestly priced meal and the maximum amount SNAP would pay if the Thrifty Food Plan’s 2021 update — a bipartisan effort and the first update since 2006 — was rolled back. In Harris County, the gap would be $0.87 per meal. Multiply that by three meals a day and 30 meals a month, and that’s a gap of $78.
That’s the smallest gap of any of the four counties in United Way’s local service area. In Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, the gap would be $90 a month. In Waller County, it would be $93 per month.
Across the span of a year, those month-after-month gaps would produce a shortfall of $936 for Harris County SNAP recipients, $1,080 for recipients in Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, and $1,116 for recipients in Waller County. These families would be facing a $1,000 gap in their food budget when a two-person household has to make less than $32,500 per year to qualify for SNAP benefits.
Immediate and long-term impacts
Households needing to spend more on food each month will have two immediate impacts: It will increase the prevalence of food insecurity, and it will require families to spend less on other essentials.
Food insecurity occurs when a household has to reduce the number or size of meals it eats because it cannot afford more, resulting in people going hungry. Upcoming research from the Kinder Institute will look more closely at current levels of food insecurity in the Houston area using data from its Greater Houston Community Panel, a longitudinal study of over 10,000 adults in Fort Bend, Harris and Montgomery counties. Using this unparalleled tool for learning about the conditions and circumstances of area residents, the institute will be able to show how people’s lives are being impacted by any changes that occur to the SNAP program.
Families will also look to make up the gap by reducing what they spend on other items, which will most likely include necessities such as utilities. To get an idea of this potential impact, data from the 2023 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) can be used to compare how much households who receive SNAP benefits[1] spend on electricity each year to those who do not in Fort Bend, Harris and Montgomery counties (the 2023 IPUMS does not include data on Waller County).
Looking specifically at households in Fort Bend County making less than $100,000 a year, those who received SNAP benefits spent almost $340 more on electricity than families who did not receive SNAP. In Harris County the difference was about $230, and in Montgomery County almost $290. There are many potential factors that could account for these differences, but one is that by having access to the additional resources provided by SNAP, those households were able to spend a bit more to keep their homes cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Any spending flexibility SNAP offers would be erased by the proposed changes to the program.
In the long term, cuts would have a detrimental impact on people’s eating habits and lifelong health.
Dietary behaviors are key non-medical drivers of health: People who consume high levels of processed and nutrient-poor foods are more likely to develop chronic health conditions such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Eating and dietary practices begin in childhood, so unhealthy habits formed as a result of parents having to feed their children cheaper, less-nutritious foods would exacerbate health inequality.
SNAP has also been shown to benefit children’s school readiness and math skills, with children in greatest need receiving the biggest boost.
SNAP enables millions of families to put healthier food on their table. Rather than making cuts to the program, it should be strengthened. Food assistance is the fourth-most common reason people call the 211 Texas/United Way HELPLINE across Fort Bend, Harris, Montgomery and Waller counties. And as the Kinder Houston Area Survey has repeatedly shown, area residents are increasingly voicing a clear mandate for the government do more to address the gaps between the rich and the poor — not make them worse.
Cuts to SNAP will deepen the need that already exists for so many families, moving hundreds of thousands of Houston-area residents further away from stability and healthy living, ultimately undermining the ability of the region as a whole to move toward greater collective wellness and prosperity.
Jessica Davison is senior director of mission and strategy for United Way of Greater Houston.
Dan Potter is the director of the Houston Population Research Center at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research.
[1] Because the IPUMS data has been around for many years, it refers to SNAP benefits as “food stamps” in its data.
