SNAP has always been something that’s controversial, in my mind. Growing up I would hear and see people talking about others being poor in the grocery line, not knowing the context or implications that those words may have. To the people it was directed it, they would get uncomfortable—which of course I understood at the time—but the real world implications of this happening everywhere is quite telling.
Now the government provides EBT cards that look like credit or debit cards to help with some of the social stigma surrounding SNAP, allowing users to buy groceries without the judgment that they used to experience. It’s not just the fact that these judgments happened, it’s the fact that people can look down on others for being poor or experiencing temporary hardships, which we all have in life. I don’t understand why we need to constantly judge others for their situations; instead we should be kind and offer help where needed.
No, this doesn’t mean going up to every SNAP family and asking if they need help. That would be silly and add to some of the social stigma; instead, gaining real world experience by volunteering at shelters or local programs that help the poor. Understanding where these people are coming from, and recognizing that not everyone is the same. Not everyone is abusing the system and driving Mercedes home. There are people out there trying to get by and to be judged for that is immoral, in my mind.
Hopefully this paper isn’t controversial for those currently in Social Work or going through school to become one. I don’t want to confuse anyone reading this, however—people can judge others for anything, but to vocalize it and put others down is wrong. Therapists can judge clients, but they should never vocalize those judgments in a negative way.
Emotions aside and judgment aside, I want to move towards the benefits and downfalls of SNAP in general. The program is wonderful, but it has shortcomings as do most things that are government ran (some would argue all things). One of those things is not accounting for specific circumstances per family. What I mean by that is certain areas have higher costs of living than others. So if a family lives in Washington DC, it’s probably going to be more expensive than a family that lives in Memphis, TN. The government should focus more on cost of living areas rather than a static number based on how big a family is.
One of the great things about SNAP is how it allows families food security while letting them spend money that would have otherwise gone towards food to go to other important things, like rent or utility payments. Having food security makes a world of difference when you’ve experience insecurity yourself. It helps with depression; health outcomes; academic outcomes; life expectancy. All of these things because of one single government program.
I have a friend that uses the program and she benefits tremendously because of it in her life. She would say all the time that she wishes she didn’t have to always eat ramen noodles because she’s worried about the long term health effects of doing so. When you get older, thinks like nutrition start to matter a whole lot more than to a 19 year old collect student in a dorm room forced to eat the same thing for a couple of semesters.
Nutrition is very important. Unfortunately, SNAP doesn’t necessarily accommodate the highest efficacy in nutritional returns, but some would say its good enough. I’m in a similar mindset—as long as some nutritional goals are being met and ramen noodles aren’t being served for breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday, then clearly it’s a net benefit to be in the program.
An academic journal talking about poverty in America and how SNAP helps alleviate it had this to say: “We found an average decline of 4.4 percent in the prevalence of poverty due to SNAP benefits, while the average decline in the depth and severity of poverty was 10.3 and 13.2 percent, respectively. SNAP benefits had a particularly strong effect on child poverty, reducing its depth by an average of 15.5 percent and its severity by an average of 21.3 percent from 2000 to 2009.”
References:
Smith, J. A., & Doe, R. B. (2017). Alleviating poverty in the United States: The critical role of SNAP benefits. Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/262233/files/17742_err132_1_.pdf
You mentioned that Not everyone is abusing the system and driving Mercedes home. That is an important observation, as it seems to me that many people quickly raise the issue of cheaters who use SNAP benefits because they falsely report low incomes, or who have low incomes, but have hidden wealth or support. I think anyone who deals with the general public soon realizes that a small fraction of people (probably fewer than 5%) are sort of dishonest, slimy, predatory, or psychopathic. In any system involving lots of people, there are going to be a fraction of people who cheat, steal, lie, and justify this behavior to themselves. However, the sort of cheating where people with hidden wealth or unreported incomes use SNAP must be extremely low (estimates from 2018 suggested a 0.14% fraud rate where recipients were investigated and found guilty of fraud. If that is 20% of all recipient fraud, the actual level of fraud might be as high as 0.7%. Fraud committed by retailers trafficking SNAP benefits is estimated at about 1%).
Your citation from the 2017 article is also encouraging, as it suggests that SNAP makes a significant reduction in experienced (post-tax / post-benefit) poverty.
I wonder sometimes whether it might be better to just give poor people cash rather than SNAP. SNAP benefits can only be used to purchase uncooked food (although there are grocery stores that will cook some raw foods for you as a service, for no fee), and so while SNAP benefits help make malnourishment and starvation exceedingly rare in our society, the problems of housing insecurity or other problems of poverty cannot be addressed so much with SNAP, aside from the point you make that every dollar in SNAP is a dollar less the family needs to spend on food, giving the household more money to use for other necessities.
I'm a bit concerned about refusing to allow households to spend SNAP benefits on sweetened drinks, candy, or other morally suspect foods. A goal of a welfare safety net is to give freedom and autonomy to persons who are suffering a period of low income, either because of an economic hardship they are temporarily passing through, or some more permanent problem, often related to physical or mental health conditions or disabilities. Restricting what people purchase with SNAP benefits will be justified by health concerns, which is why a person is not allowed to purchase cigarettes or alcohol with SNAP benefits, but at some point the restrictions on SNAP use cross from nutrition and science to moral or religious reasons, and I’m wary of that. For example, I suspect that consuming most meat or animal-derived food products available in supermarkets is immoral, since much of that meat is generated through industrial livestock systems or industrialized marine harvesting, and so if we are going to forbid the consumption of alcohol or soda pop, why not also ban the purchase of animal-protein products and restrict SNAP users to vegetarian diets? What if some persons thinks that only organic food is moral or healthy, and we start forcing SNAP to be used only for organic products? This seems like a Reductio ad absurdum argument, but I think the assumption that we should be strict in limiting what welfare recipients do with the aid we give them is one that we must treat with caution and concern, if we highly value individual liberty and dignity.
The earlier part of your reaction where you think about how people are eager to judge others reminds me of some psychological experiments that show humans tend to be very good at detecting cheating and unfair exchanges where someone else gets an advantage. Helping people overcome that innate tendency toward distrust, cynicism, paranoia, and judgmental prejudices is certainly a huge task we have in advancing civilization and improving society. I wish people were better at recognizing the actual levels of threat from cheating and deceit.
As for government programs being inherently inferior. Of course they are. In an ideal or perfect society, people would be so honest, charitable, fair, and open-hearted that we would not need a public welfare system, nor police, courts, nor jails. Taxes would be very low, paying mainly for infrastructural improvements and pooling risk. Given the scope of the problems we face, given the actual material (humans and their human natures) we are dealing with, we must settle for government and coercive charity through social welfare systems, at least for the time being. I look forward to the utopian anarchy our remote descendants may someday enjoy when people are better than they are now.
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