SNAP Challenge, Meal Zero

This week, together with some friends from a reading group, I'm undertaking what's known as the SNAP challenge. The basic idea is to keep to a food budget consistent with the maximum benefit amount for a single person--$200 per month, or about $6.67 per day in September (which has 30 days). The point is to highlight some of the challenges--nutritional and otherwise--that low income persons face.

This benefit amount is what a single person with no income (and no assets) would receive in SNAP benefits. We chose it because otherwise the benefit amount would represent a supplement to some amount of income, a undetermined fraction of which could be spent on food. (FNS assumes that this will be .3, but it could be more or less than that.) By FNS (Food and Nutrition Service) thinking, a single person could eat a diet consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans on this amount. As should be obvious, I'm not claiming to understand what it would be like to have no income--least of all, in a dietary sense. But I come in with the prior that I eat a good, though not extravagant, diet. And I wonder what I take for granted in this aspect of my life.

Another context for this is that SNAP has come to the attention of would-be budget cutters worried about our budget deficits. For example, Paul Ryan's budget would cut SNAP funding by 20% over ten years. About this, two comments. First, in general, the dire budget outcomes now agreed upon by almost everyone could be largely avoided by doing simple things, like scaling defense back to where it was in 2000 and letting the Bush tax cuts expire--for everyone. (I stole this point from Doug Henwood: http://lbo-news.com/2011/08/04/wild-budget-math/.) This rate of spending on defense would still leave us head and shoulders above anyone else in the world. Second, as the chart alongside shows, SNAP take-up has tracked alongside US macro cycles for the last 40 years. Like most of the government spending that people like to complain about these days, the increase in SNAP takeup has been automatic, a result of the federal government's role as countercyclical spender, not the profligacy of this (or any) administration.


It bears mentioning in this context that SNAP is a very effective program. Research by Yen et. al (2008), Depolt et. al (2010), Gundersen et. al (2009) and Ratcliffe and McKernan (2010)--among many others--shows that SNAP significantly reduces food insecurity. In addition, the error rate for SNAP benefits is around or below 5%, an enviable rate of administrative efficiency. (See http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/rules/Legislation/about.htm.)


I also like to note that while the trends in UE and SNAP are mostly parallel, the level of SNAP takeup starts to diverge from UE around 1985. In other words, there are lots more employed people receiving SNAP now than before 1985. The reasons for this are complicated, but surely the relative buying power of those who are employed but at the lowest quintiles of the income distribution has got something to do with it.

So, I go into this with the knowledge that I probably won't be able to live within the budget proposed--and certainly not 20% less than that. What I'm going to do is track and price what I eat, with an eye toward what this would mean for my health and energy level on a day-to-day basis.

Meal Zero: Dinner Sunday Sept. 4, 2011.

2 eggs ($.42)
3 links chicken sausage ($1.67)
4 oz. brussels sprouts ($1.19)
8 oz. diet, caffeine free soda (.16)
1/2 piece of fudge cake ($1.75)
Total cost: $5.19

So, okay, the fudge cake is a little over the top, but I'm moving into this gradually. Even without this expense, though, I would have spent $3.44, or almost 1/2 a day's allotment on dinner alone.