Even before large pieces of the federal government shut down in October 2025, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP – sometimes called the food stamp program – was in for some big changes.
The tax, spending and policy bill passed by Congress earlier this year expanded work requirements for SNAP, tightened eligibility rules, imposed new cost-sharing obligations on states and made other changes to the program. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the changes will reduce federal spending on SNAP by $186.7 billion over the next decade.
But the 43-day shutdown created further challenges for the program, which helps nearly 42 million Americans put food on the table. While October benefits were paid in full and on time, November’s payments got caught up in a tangle of lawsuits, conflicting court rulings and short-term, state-level fixes. The law reopening the government funds SNAP through September 2026, the end of the current fiscal year.
Here’s a closer look at the food stamp program, based on data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (whose Food and Nutrition Service administers SNAP), the Census Bureau and other sources.
Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to learn more about the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. The nation’s largest food assistance program, SNAP became entangled in the 43-day budget standoff between congressional Democrats, Republicans and the Trump administration.
Our main data source was the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), the agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers SNAP and other food assistance programs. We supplemented the FNS data with data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, which focuses on the demographic and other characteristics of people and households who receive various forms of federal assistance. We also used the Census Bureau’s population and household estimates in some of our analyses. Finally, we obtained government expenditure data for other federal assistance programs from the Office of Management and Budget.
Our analysis of SNAP participation rates in states and territories used data on SNAP recipients for May 2025 and Census Bureau population estimates for July 2024, the most recent available. For Guam and the Virgin Islands, which the census did not publish estimates of, we used 2024 population estimates from the CIA World Factbook.
How many Americans use food stamps?
The numbers vary from month to month. But in May 2025, the most recent month with available figures, 41.7 million people in 22.4 million households received SNAP benefits. That works out to nearly 1 in every 8 people in the country.
On average, 42.4 million people in 22.7 million households received monthly SNAP benefits through the first eight months of the 2025 fiscal year (October 2024 to May 2025).
SNAP operates in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and the Virgin Islands. A separate program provides nutrition assistance grants to Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.
How has the number of food stamp recipients changed over time?
The program now known as SNAP began in 1964 but took several years to ramp up. It wasn’t until July 1974 that states – which share administrative duties over SNAP with the federal government – were required to extend it to all jurisdictions within their borders. That year, 12.9 million people, or 6.1% of the resident U.S. population at the time, received SNAP benefits.
Program participation has ebbed and flowed over the ensuing decades, driven both by changes in economic conditions and eligibility rules. More people file for SNAP benefits during recessions, and participation generally doesn’t fall back until recoveries have fully taken hold.
For instance, between fiscal years 1980 and 2008, the share of all U.S. households receiving SNAP benefits stayed between about 7% and about 11%. But that percentage rose rapidly during the Great Recession, peaking at 18.8% in fiscal 2013 – representing 47.6 million people.
In March 2020, as the nation headed into COVID-19 lockdowns, Congress authorized extra SNAP benefits for recipients and suspended work and training requirements for the duration of the declared public health emergency. The number of recipients immediately jumped, from 37.2 million to 40.9 million in April 2020. Participation eventually reached just over 43 million recipients in September 2020, or 13% of the resident population.
{snip}
What do we know about food stamp recipients in the U.S.?
The most comprehensive data source we have is the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, although its most recent data is from 2023. That year, nearly 23 million SNAP recipients (65%) were adults, and 12.4 million (35%) were children.
Non-Hispanic White people accounted for 44.2% of adult SNAP recipients and 24.8% of child recipients in 2023. Nearly 27% of adult recipients and almost a third of child recipients (32.3%) were Black. Hispanics, who can be of any race, accounted for 24.2% of adult recipients and 40.7% of child recipients.
The vast majority of both adult and child recipients were born in the United States – 81.1% and 96.9%, respectively.
Among adult recipients, 54.1% had a high school diploma or less education. And despite the program’s work requirements, 61% said they had not been employed at all that year.
{snip}
Where is food stamp usage highest and lowest?
In Guam, 22.5% of the population receives SNAP benefits – the highest rate of any state or territory, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. New Mexico is next highest (21.5%), followed by the District of Columbia (20%) and the Virgin Islands (19.9%).
Wyoming has the nation’s lowest rate of SNAP use: Just 4.6% of Cowboy State residents get the benefits. Wyoming’s neighbor, Utah, is close behind at 5.1%. Other states with low rates include New Hampshire (5.4%) and Kansas (6.3%).
{snip}
The post What the Data Says About Food Stamps in the U.S. appeared first on American Renaissance.
American Renaissance
T1
