Participation and program expenditures for SNAP continue to fall

Fiscal 2017 marked the fourth consecutive year that participation in USDA’s largest food and nutrition assistance program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), decreased. On average, 42.2 million people—or about 13 percent of the Nation’s population—participated in the program each month in fiscal 2017. Participants received an average of about $126 of benefits per month to purchase food at authorized foodstores. Fiscal 2017’s caseload was almost 5 percent fewer than in the previous fiscal year and 11 percent fewer than the historical high average of 47.6 million per month in fiscal 2013. Fiscal 2017’s decrease in the number of SNAP participants in large part reflects the continued improvement in the U.S. economy in recent years. Federal spending for SNAP fell by 4 percent in fiscal 2017 to $68.0 billion—15 percent less than the historical high of $79.9 billion set in fiscal 2013. This chart appears in "Number of People Participating in USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Continues to Fall" from the April 2018 issue of ERS’s Amber Waves magazine.

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