Food Stamp Program Reform

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The federal Food Stamp Program is an assisted nutrition program that helps millions of eligible, low-income individuals and families (United States Department of Agriculture). This program gives its recipients extra money each month to try to help them have better food security. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is also the largest program in the federal safety net (United States Department of Agriculture). In Ohio’s Appalachian counties, there are 515,300 recipients which is 25.4% of the population (Job and Family Services). The Supplemental Nutrition Program is a good program except for one problem that can be fixed relatively fast and one problem that it will take a little time to solve. The problem that can be fixed right away is that the Supplemental Nutrition Program can be abused by the recipients buying junk food instead of healthy food. The problem that will take some time to fix is that some recipients make unhealthy food choices because they do not have access to a local supermarket. In order to fix these two problems the Food Stamp Program needs to better regulate what can be bought with the Food Stamp card and items in convenient stores need to be better stocked in order to keep accepting Food Stamp cards.
In order to be eligible to receive help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the household has to meet certain tests such as, resources, income, deductions, employment requirements, immigrant eligibility, and special rules for the elderly or disabled. In order to meet the requirement for the resources test, the household may have two thousand dollars in countable resources, such as a bank account, but house and lot do not count (United States Department of Agriculture). In order to meet t...

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Swan, Richelle S., et al. "The Untold Story of Welfare Fraud." Journal of Sociology & Social
Welfare 35.3 (2008): 133-151. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2014.
VartaAnian, Thomas P., Linda Houser, and Joseph Harkness. "Food Stamps and Dependency:
Disentangling the Short-Term And Long-Term Economic Effects Of Food Stamp Receipt And Low Income For Young Mothers." Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 38.4 (2011): 101-122. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2014.
United States Department of Agriculture. “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.” 20 Dec.
2013. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.

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