Food Stamps Helped Reduce Poverty Rate
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Frodo
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« on: April 09, 2012, 08:26:04 PM »

Food Stamps Helped Reduce Poverty Rate, Study Finds

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: April 9, 2012


WASHINGTON — A new study by the Agriculture Department has found that food stamps, one of the country’s largest social safety net programs, reduced the poverty rate substantially during the recent recession. The food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, reduced the poverty rate by nearly 8 percent in 2009, the most recent year included in the study, a significant impact for a social program whose effects often go unnoticed by policy makers.

The food stamp program is one of the largest antipoverty efforts in the country, serving more than 46 million people. But the extra income it provides is not counted in the government’s formal poverty measure, an omission that makes it difficult for officials to see the effects of the policy and get an accurate figure for the number of people beneath the poverty threshold, which was about $22,000 for a family of four in 2009.

“SNAP plays a crucial, but often underappreciated, role in alleviating poverty,” said Stacy Dean, an expert on the program with the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based research group that focuses on social programs and budget policy.

Enrollment in the food stamp program grew substantially during the recession and immediately after, rising by 45 percent from January of 2009 to January of this year, according to monthly figures on the U.S.D.A. Web site. The stimulus package pushed by President Obama and enacted by Congress significantly boosted funding for the program as a temporary relief for families who had fallen on hard times in the recession.

But the steady rise tapered off in January, when enrollment was down slightly from December, a change in direction that Ms. Dean said could signal that the recovery was having an effect even among poor families.
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Miamiu1027
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« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2012, 08:30:42 PM »

ass-backwards society needs a study to figure this out?  it's pure truism
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dead0man
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« Reply #2 on: April 09, 2012, 11:22:49 PM »

As someone who proudly dislikes "big govt", handouts and what not, I fully support the the Food Stamp program.  As someone who has been to several WIC centers and done the voucher at the grocery store thing (they don't pay the freshly enlisted enough), I also fully support that program.  There is no reason anybody should starve, especially not in a western nation.  Even if they are lazy drug addicted bums.

I also think we should kick people off of it (and possibly jail) that abuse the system and be vigorous in looking for that abuse.  They should probably also limit the amount of "crap" food one can purchase with the cards, but not flat out remove them.  It's disturbing that Americans who are on Food Stamps are fatter than Americans not on Food Stamps.  Kind of like how people in Gaza are fatter than people in most other Middle Eastern countries, the population is booming, yet halfwits in the West claim they are being "slaughtered" and "starved".
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shua
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« Reply #3 on: April 10, 2012, 08:54:12 PM »

Odd accounting here. The headline only seems to be true if you consider the food to be income.  That's good in itself, but I don't see any evidence it is helping bring people out of poverty, which would mean a state where they don't need to rely on food stamps anymore.
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