Eliminating Benefits Cliffs In SNAP.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of the largest safety net benefit programs in the U.S. with over 42 million Americans on the program. Over 1.4 million Georgians receive SNAP, or about 13% of our population.

SNAP has severe benefits cliffs in the program. Benefits cliffs put recipients in danger of losing most or all their safety net benefits if they receive a raise or promotion. The result is that people work fewer hours, work part-time instead of full-time, or even turn down raises or promotions because the money they’d lose in safety net benefits greatly exceed the increase they’d receive through full-time work or raises.

My colleague at the Georgia Center for Opportunity, Erik Randolph co-authored a new paper with Angela Richidi of the American Enterprise Institute on how to fix this problem.

• The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of the nation’s largest safety-net programs for low-income households in the US, distributing over $94 billion in food benefits in fiscal year 2024.
• SNAP’s benefit design results in large benefit cliffs that discourage employment among participants, jeopardizing the program’s overall effectiveness.
• This proposal would align the four components of the SNAP benefit structure—the maximum benefit levels, the tapering point, the benefit reduction rate, and the exit point—to eliminate benefit cliffs and improve employment outcomes for participants while reducing program costs.
• Total SNAP benefit costs would remain consistent with historic norms and Congressional Budget Office baseline projections as recently as 2021, and savings could be repurposed to other safety-net reforms, such as improving the refundable child tax credit in this year’s tax legislation, or used to reduce the deficit.

I’d urge you to read the entire paper.

The efforts at the federal and state levels to tackle government efficiency via a “DOGE” effort will largely fail unless we make the nation’s safety net programs work. These programs are such a large part of the federal budget passed through with state money added to Georgians who are then thrust upon the precipice of benefits cliffs. It’s wrong and we should fix it.

For things Georgia can do to address this problem, read Erik’s original paper here.