Sunday, 16 November 2014 00:00

SNAP Helps Roughly 1.7 Million Struggling Veterans, Including Thousands in Every State

Written by Brynne Keith-Jennings | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Roughly 1.7 million veterans live in households that participated in SNAP (formerly food stamps) at some point during the past 12 months, CBPP analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey finds. In every state, thousands of struggling veterans use SNAP to help put food on the table; in two states, more than 100,000 veterans do: Florida (132,100) and Texas (119,200). In ten states, at least 10 percent of veterans lived in households that received SNAP in the last year. (See Table 1 for state-by-state data.)

The 1.7 million figure, a three-year average for 2011 through 2013, represents the number of veterans in households that received SNAP at any point during the previous year. About 980,000 veterans lived in households that participated in SNAP in an average month in 2013, data from a different Census survey (the Current Population Survey) show. (For additional information on the difference between these two methods, see “Notes on Methods” below.)

For low-income veterans, who may be unemployed, working in low-wage jobs, or disabled, SNAP provides an essential support that enables them to purchase nutritious food for their families. Nationwide, SNAP is a powerful anti-hunger and anti-poverty tool: it kept 4.8 million people above the poverty line in 2013, including 2.1 million children.

Many veterans returning from service face challenges in finding work and making ends meet. While the overall unemployment rate for veterans is below the national average, the unemployment rate for recent veterans (serving between September 2001 and the present) remains high, at 9 percent in 2013.[1] In addition, more than one-quarter of recent veterans reported service-connected disabilities in 2013,[2] which can make it harder to provide for their families: households with a veteran who has a disability that prevents him or her from working are about twice as likely to lack access to adequate food as households that do not include someone with a disability.[3] About 15 percent of households that receive help through the charitable food assistance network (which includes food banks, pantries, and shelters) include a veteran, a recent study found.[4] For veterans struggling to overcome obstacles to feed their families, SNAP makes a crucial difference.

Notes on Methods

CBPP analyzed the American Community Survey (ACS) for this state-level analysis. The figures presented here represent our best estimate of the number of veterans who live in households that receive SNAP at some point during the year.

The analysis combines data for three years (2011 through 2013) to improve the reliability of the state estimates. The figures, which total 1.7 million veterans nationwide for the three-year average (the 2013 figure was 1.6 million), refer to veterans who live in households where anyone received SNAP benefits at any time in the past 12 months.We also estimate, based on Census’ Current Population Survey (CPS), that 980,000 veterans lived in SNAP households in an average month in 2013. The two figures differ for three reasons. First, the number of veterans in SNAP households at any point in the year is necessarily larger than a monthly average. Second, the figures come from different surveys, and the CPS tends to undercount SNAP recipients more than the ACS does. Third, they cover different periods — 2011 through 2013 for the ACS estimate versus 2013 alone for the CPS estimate. Both surveys likely badly undercount homeless veterans, though the ACS probably misses fewer.

Link to the original article from CBPP.

Read 30547 times

Sen. Warren on TPP

TPP Calls

Feed not found.

Latest News

  • Trump administration's voter suppression attempts ahead of midterms are not only 'morally wrong,' they're illegal +

    Trump administration's voter suppression attempts ahead of midterms are not only 'morally wrong,' they're illegal Imagine going to the polls on Election Day and discovering that your ballot could be collected and reviewed by the Read More
  • ACLU Blueprints Offer Vision to Cut US Incarceration Rate in Half by Prioritizing 'People Over Prisons' +

    ACLU Blueprints Offer Vision to Cut US Incarceration Rate in Half by Prioritizing 'People Over Prisons' ACLU Blueprints Offer Vision to Cut US Incarceration Rate in Half by Prioritizing 'People Over Prisons' Read More
  • As Florence Makes Landfall, Poorest Once More Likely to Suffer Most From Storm's Destruction +

    As Florence Makes Landfall, Poorest Once More Likely to Suffer Most From Storm's Destruction "These disasters drag into the light exactly who is already being thrown away," notes Naomi Klein Read More
  • How about some good news? Kansas Democratic Representative advances bill for Native Peoples. +

    How about some good news? Kansas Democratic Representative advances bill for Native Peoples. How about some good news? Kansas Democratic Representative advances bill for Native Peoples. Read More
  • How One Dying Man Changed The Debate About The Tax Bill +

    How One Dying Man Changed The Debate About The Tax Bill What mattered was that he showed up — that he put himself in front of the people whose opinions on Read More
  • Democrats Just Won a Major Victory in Virginia +

    Democrats Just Won a Major Victory in Virginia On a night of Democratic victories, one of the most significant wins came in Virginia, where the party held onto Read More
  • Repealing the Jim Crow law that keeps 1.5 million Floridians from voting. +

    Repealing the Jim Crow law that keeps 1.5 million Floridians from voting. A seismic political battle that could send shockwaves all the way to the White House was launched last week in Read More
  • Nuclear Weapons: Who Pays, Who Profits? +

    Nuclear Weapons: Who Pays, Who Profits? In an interview with Reuters conducted a month after he took office, Donald Trump asserted that the U.S. had “fallen Read More
  • Sessions issues sweeping new criminal charging policy +

    Sessions issues sweeping new criminal charging policy Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned the sweeping criminal charging policy of former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. and directed Read More
  • 1
  • 2

Featured TPP, TITIP and TISA News

  • Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch on the Demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Lame-Duck Session of Congress +

    Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch on the Demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Lame-Duck Session of Congress The news that the White House and Republican congressional leaders have given up on passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is Read More
  • No, Trump Didn’t Kill the TPP — Progressives Did +

    No, Trump Didn’t Kill the TPP — Progressives Did If you read the headlines, Donald Trump’s election has killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The headlines have it wrong. Read More
  • "It's About Letting Giant Corporations Rig the Rules": Warren Skewers TPP +

    Democratic senator from Massachusetts offers fresh criticism of trade deal in new video Read More
  • WTO Authorizes Over $1 Billion in Sanctions Unless U.S. Guts Popular Country-of-Origin Meat Labels, Disproving Obama Claim That Trade Pacts Can’t Undermine Public Interest Policies +

    WTO Authorizes Over $1 Billion in Sanctions Unless U.S. Guts Popular Country-of-Origin Meat Labels, Disproving Obama Claim That Trade Pacts Can’t Undermine Public Interest Policies Today’s World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling against the U.S. country-of-origin meat labels (COOL) that consumers rely on to make informed Read More
  • Trans-Pacific Partnership: Exporting U.S. Meat, Dairy, and Disease +

    Trans-Pacific Partnership: Exporting U.S. Meat, Dairy, and Disease Negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade agreement between 12 nations—ended earlier this week. The likely passage of the agreement means Read More
  • Protesting Big Pharma 'Death Sentence,' Cancer Patient Arrested Outside TPP Talks +

    Protesting Big Pharma 'Death Sentence,' Cancer Patient Arrested Outside TPP Talks 'For thousands of women to die unnecessary of breast cancer because of the TPP is a horrible, cruel, premeditated, and Read More
  • Obama trade agenda inches toward passage with Senate vote on ‘fast track’ +

    Obama trade agenda inches toward passage with Senate vote on ‘fast track’ A razor-thin Senate vote Tuesday put President Obama on the cusp of claiming victory for his ambitious international trade agenda, Read More
  • Fast Track Down +

    Fast Track Down The Fast Track trade authority package was rejected Friday because two years of effort by a vast corporate coalition, the Read More
  • Shock: Congress Plots to Pay for Reviled TPP Deal by Raiding Medicare +

    Shock: Congress Plots to Pay for Reviled TPP Deal by Raiding Medicare It just doesn't get more cynical than this. Note that we're talking about a bipartisan trade deal, thanks to 14 Read More
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3

Put Trade in the Spotlight

CWA devised a simple plan for which they were united suited: drag TPP out of the shadows and into the light - one city at a time - using a medium they understand intimately: Daily Newspapers!

Two CWA members - Dave Felice in Denver, CO and Madelyn Elder in Portland, OR have started the ball rolling. We just need to keep up the momentum.

Button-ShareTPPWithNewspaper