Two months into the pandemic, roughly $1 in $8 spent on groceries in the United States came from the federal food assistance programs, SNAP and the newly created Pandemic EBT (P-EBT), compared to $1 of every $14 beforehand, said the USDA on Tuesday.
Redemptions through the Electronic Benefits Transfer system used for SNAP and P-EBT averaged $8.4 billion a month last spring and summer, 86 percent higher than the same months in 2019.
“This increase reflects the larger role of food assistance programs in supporting food expenditures during the pandemic,” said the USDA. The economic recession that accompanied the pandemic resulted in higher enrollment in SNAP and larger SNAP benefits. P-EBT, intended to help low-income parents buy food for their children when schools were closed, “reflects a substitution of one kind of food assistance benefit … to another.”
The report focused on the first six months of additional spending on public nutrition through the EBT system, from April through September 2020. Since then, Congress has increased temporarily SNAP benefits by 15 percent per person and provided additional money for P-EBT, WIC and food banks. When the Biden administration took office, it announced a 15 percent increase in P-EBT benefits and said it would try to increase benefits to the poorest families receiving food stamps.
States used the EBT system to deliver SNAP and P-EBT benefits, so the Economic Research Service was unable to distinguish beween the programs in its analysis of EBT redemptions at food retailers. “Overall, SNAP and P-EBT appear to have played a larger role in providing qualifying households with resources to purchase food during the pandemic,” said the USDA.
Online redemptions skyrocketed last spring and summer as the USDA rapidly expanded its pilot program allowing SNAP recipients to buy groceries via the internet. Sales were $2.9 million last February when only a couple of states were in the pilot and shot to $196 million in September when 46 states and the District of Columbia were in the pilot. “Online redemptions still made up a relatively small share of total redemptions though their growth is likely to continue in 2021 as the pilot expands to more states and retailers.”
So-called super stores, a category that includes “big box” stores,” warehouse stores and very large supermarkets, expanded their share of the food dollar during the pandemic, to 53.8 cents, an increase of 0.2 cents, said the report. Other types of stores, particularly convenience stores, dollar stores and drug stores, lost market share.
Economist Jordan Jones, author of the report, said shoppers may have felt super stores would have lower prices, be better stocked or were more suited to larger-but-fewer trips to the store. “This behavior may have led households to shop more at super stores (where many foods and other goods can be purchased in bulk) and less at covenience and combination grocery stores as they have limited offerings.”
SNAP enrollment soared by 17 percent in the first months of the pandemic, reaching 43 million people last June, compared to 37 million before the pandemic. Enrollment was 41.4 million at latest count. Nearly 11 percent of people taking part in a Census Bureau “Pulse” survey earlier this month said they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the preceding week.