3 Alabama counties saw 85 percent drop in food stamp participation after work requirements restarted
Thirteen previously exempted Alabama counties saw an 85 percent drop in food stamp participation after work requirements were put in place on Jan. 1, according to the Alabama Department of Human Resources.
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The counties – Greene, Hale, Perry, Dallas, Lowndes, Wilcox, Monroe, Conecuh, Clarke, Washington, Choctaw, Sumter and Barbour – had been exempt from a change that limited able-bodied adults without dependents to three months of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits within a three-year time frame unless they were working or participating in an approved training program.
During the economic downturn of 2011-2013, several states – including Alabama – waived the SNAP work requirements in response to high unemployment. It was reinstituted for 54 counties on Jan. 1, 2016 and for the remaining 13 on Jan. 1, 2017. As of April 2017, the highest jobless rate among the 13 previously excluded counties was in Wilcox County, which reported a state-high unemployment rate of 11.7 percent, down more than 11 percentage points from the county’s jobless rate for the same month of 2011.
Ending the exemption has dramatically cut the number of SNAP recipients in the counties.
As of Jan. 1, 2017, there were 13,663 able-bodied adults without dependents receiving food stamps statewide. That number dropped to 7,483 by May 1, 2017. Among the 13 counties, there were 5,538 adults ages 18-50 without dependents receiving food stamps as of Jan. 1, 2017. That number dropped to 831 – a decline of about 85 percent – by May 1, 2017.
“Based on the trend, the number of (able-bodied adults without dependents) recipients for SNAP benefits is expected to continue to decline statewide and in the formerly 13 exempted counties,” according to Alabama DHR spokesperson John Hardy.
Statewide, the number of able-bodied adults receiving food stamps has fallen by almost 35,000 people since Jan. 1, 2016. Each recipient receives about $126 a month in benefits.
Nationwide, there are about 44 million people receiving SNAP benefits at a cost of about $71 billion. The Trump administration has vowed to cut the food stamp rolls over the next decade, including ensuring that able-bodied adults recipients are working.
Like good locusts they’ll probably just move to a jurisdiction that still allows their parasitic behaviors to fester.
If you set up a kiosk in front of a store selling donuts and put a sign that said “Free Donuts” a certain percentage of the people walking down the street would take a free donut rather than enter the store and pay for a donut. Who couldn’t figure that out?
There will always be a certain number of people who will take the path of least resistance, as soon as there are some limitations put in place, they’ll forgo the offer. It’s human nature, you can’t blame people for being human. The folks who are elected or paid to develop, implement and run these programs are the real culprits. They either promise or contract to do the right thing and to use the tools and resources provided by the taxpayer to handle the exegencies of whatever task they have been assigned to.
Specialization has been both a boon and a curse to modern societies because it focuses so minutely on each discipline that no one appears to be able to see the bigger picture.
These counties are known as the “Black Belt” and are pitifully, pitifully poor. Little, if any, industry or decent paying jobs. I hate to estimate the average IQ of their residents.
If they want more food stamps, they’ll have to move out of state. Hopefully Illinois or California. And good riddance.
This is how Obama bought votes and hid the ongoing recession.
85 per cent is statistically insignificant in the big picture. The government drones learned nothing.
Good so far as it goes but the qualifying phrase is ‘able bodied adults without dependents’. Jump a few hoops and you qualify as ‘disabled, lay naked on a dirty sofa, bed or rug with another proto human and you can create a ‘dependent’ and it just goes on forever.
Just another example of the old misquoted movie line “If you build it, they will come.”
That is how the nanny state works, it goes from caring for the blind, crippled, and crazy, to buying the vote of every leech in the land.
Maybe just a bit of hype to that article. Why am I not surprised they only focus on results of recipients who have NO dependents….They represent potentially only 4.1% of the whole issue anyway.
People with no dependents are the low hanging fruit,but don’t make a big difference in the overall picture.. A little research shows there might be 413,000 edible participants, and an 80% participation rate for about total 330,000 beneficiaries. So a reduction of a little over 4,000 out of 330,000 is in the focus? (4/330= 1.2%). If all counties had the same success as the 13, you would expect 85% out of the 13 counties .85 x 13,663/330,00 = 3.5% for the program overall.
“Statewide, the Alabama Human Resources Dept. reported that the number of able-bodied adults without dependents participating in the food stamp program fell by 40 percent from 13,663 to 8,125, in the first four months of 2017. In the 13 counties where work requirements resumed, adults between the ages 18-50 without dependents receiving food stamps dropped from 5,538 to an amazing 831, a decrease of 85 percent in just four months.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/ops/Reaching2013.pdf
It is important because all cuts are resisted.It is easier to make more cuts when they can show that nobody in this group was harmed by being cut off.