Miranda Pelley of Buchanan, Michigan, is counting down the days that the extra food aid she receives from the federal government expires at the end of the month. The enhanced pandemic assistance has been a lifeline for her and her five children, all under the age of nine.
“It helped make it through the month,” the 30-year-old single mother who is studying culinary arts and business told Yahoo Finance. “Without it, I don’t know how I’ll make it.”
Pelley is among the many households in 35 states that still receive the increased Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) since the start of the pandemic. These are set to end after February. The other 15 states already ended the extra help earlier.
The expiration of the benefit — which is credited with decreasing child poverty and hunger — could mean food insecurity will increase, requiring families to turn to a patchwork system of assistance to fill in the gaps.
“It would impose a lot of hardships on families and create more food insecurity,” Dr. Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University who has studied ways to reduce poverty for 20 years, told Yahoo Finance.
SNAP benefits efficiently fights hunger, but recipients still have issues
During the spring of 2020 when the pandemic started and the unemployment rate jumped to 13%, Congress subsequently raised the amount of SNAP benefits in two phases. That added an extra $95 to $340 to a household’s regular monthly benefit, which averaged $229, according to Whitmore Schanzenbach’s research.
As a result of the emergency SNAP benefits, food insufficiency was reduced by approximately 9%, according to Whitmore Schanzenbach’s analysis. Black households with children saw a reduction of 11% in child hunger and Hispanic families saw a drop of 14% in food insecurity relative to their incomes.
Those successes are likely to be reversed starting in March.
And while inflation has cooled, food prices remain elevated, making the loss of those extra benefits sting even more. Grocery prices were up 11.8% in December, with massive year-over-year increases for eggs (up 59.9%), lettuce (up 24.9%), breakfast cereal (up 23.4%), butter (up 43.8%) and bakery products (up 16.3%). January’s numbers are due out next week.
Blunting those increases is the 2021 changes to the Thrifty Food Plan that is used by the USDA to calculate SNAP benefits. The re-evaluation led the government to determine that a healthy diet cost 21% more for families on SNAP than the previous plan, increasing benefits by 25%, or an average of $34.
But that may not be enough.
Pelley, who received almost $2,000 a month before getting $95 in extra pandemic SNAP benefits for her children, noted the additional assistance itself wasn’t enough to keep up with inflation.
“It wasn’t nearly enough. Milk and mayonnaise were about $10. My twin babies go through a gallon of milk a day,” Pelley said. “I’m a chef, so I had to cook noodles for days to feed my family.”
Another pandemic food program could help supplement, but not replace extra SNAP benefits
Another pandemic program that helped low-income families and isn’t going away is the P-EBT pandemic EBT program (P-EBT), what Whitmore Schazenbach called a “shining star of the pandemic.” The program provided food aid for students to replace the lunches they didn’t get when school was out during the summer of 2020. It was a temporary program that was made permanent in December.
It’s been a boon for families, according to Allison Johnson, campaign director of Parents Together, a nonprofit parental advocacy group. A Parents Together survey of 550 low-income parents found that 6 in 10 parents had trouble affording food and 4 in 10 can’t afford food because of inflation.
“Forty million dollars was added to this program and it saw success with parents,” Johnson said. “It’s important that this program continues.”
But the program does have limited impact, according to Lauren Bauer, associate director of the Hamilton Project who has studied federal nutrition assistance programs for 20 years. While it reduced food insecurity in children by 17%, it isn’t a replacement for the overall pandemic SNAP benefits recipients receive at the end of the month.
“The program just replaces student lunches in the summer and it’s not going to overlap with the loss of pandemic SNAP benefits,” Bauer said.
More government programs can supplement pandemic SNAP benefits
There are several other places these experts expect families to turn to. To start, the Earned income Tax Credit [EITC] and the Child Tax Credit may give a much-needed boost to food-insecure families during tax season. While these credits themselves are not as generous as during the pandemic, they are something extra.
For the 2022 tax season, the EITC offers up to $6,935 for a family with three children that earns less than $59,187. Parents can also claim $2,000 for each child, down from $3,000 last year.
Food banks can also fill the void. The Parents Together survey found that 52% of parents say they use food banks to feed their children, including Pelley who will continue to turn to them when the pandemic SNAP benefits end.
“I depended on food banks for canned goods,” Pelley said, “and will still depend on them.”
But more needs to be done, according to experts.
Whitmore Schazenbach said the government can work to sign up more families for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), a government program that gives supplemental food assistance to mothers and children under five years old.
“Increased WIC participation would help fill that gap,” Whitmore Schanzenbach said.
Employers can also help by increasing wages and providing “a living wage to help parents,” she added, while the Federal Reserve can slow its interest-hiking campaign against inflation to avoid causing a recession, which typically hits lower earners hardest.
But the obvious solution is to continue the enhanced SNAP benefits, according to Pelley, who said she wants government officials to realize that struggling families like hers need that extra money even if the pandemic is waning and employment is high.
“They should go up with the amount because we still really need it,” she said.
Ella Vincent is the personal finance reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @bookgirlchicago
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