SNAP Works for Maryland Children

While it’s widely known that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps thousands of Maryland families put food on the table, it also does much more to help keep children healthy and set them up for long-term success.

Research increasingly shows that SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, can help prevent children from experience the negative long-term effects of poverty, abuse or neglect, parental addiction or mental illness, and exposure to violence — events that can take a continued toll on their well-being later in life. As a new Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report finds, SNAP helps form a strong foundation of health and well-being by lifting millions of families out of poverty, improving food security, and helping improve health and academic achievement.

SNAP is improving the futures of about 1 in every 5 children all across Maryland, about 316,400 children in 2014.

SNAP’s benefits are modest, but they’re well-targeted to the families that need them the most. While participating families with children in Maryland receive an average of $365 each month, those with incomes below 50 percent of the poverty line – less than $12,125 per year for a family of four – get an average of $471 per month. That’s one reason why SNAP helps lift more children out of deep poverty than any other government assistance program.

In fact, much of SNAP’s success can be attributed to its design:

• a consistent national structure that effectively targets food benefits to those with the greatest need;
• eligibility rules and a funding structure that make benefits available to children in almost all families with little income and few resources;
• a design that automatically responds to changes in the economy;
• and rigorous requirements to ensure a high degree of program integrity.

SNAP is helping to give thousands of Maryland children the foundation they need to succeed. Efforts to reform or enhance it should build on its effectiveness in protecting the well-being of our children — and those nationwide — and preserve the essential program features that contribute to that success.

There are also opportunities in Maryland to build on SNAP’s success by helping more school-aged children access school meals. Allowing students now eligible for reduced priced meals to get school meals for free would ensure that more children get the nutrition they need during the school day to be ready to learn. The cost of reduced-price meals is still a barrier for many families, which mean children may go without eating during the school day. Similarly, changing the school breakfast program so that it is easier for students to take advantage of it will make sure that all students, regardless of income, can start the day with full stomachs.