The 90-day limit on food stamps for able-bodied adults without children, enacted as part of welfare reform in 1996, failed to move people into jobs or increase their incomes after the Great Recession, said a USDA study released on Tuesday. “The findings should prove relevant as the economy recovers and states begin to re-introduce the time limit” after the pandemic, said the researchers who carried out the study.
The time limit on SNAP benefits to so-called ABAWDs, or able-bodied adults without dependents, was temporarily suspended after the coronavirus hit the United States in early 2020. And last October, a federal judge threw out Trump regulation that reduced the power of states to issue waivers allowing food stamps to ABAWDs beyond the three-month cutoff. Enactment of the 2018 farm bill was delayed for months by Republican proposals to make millions of “work-capable” adults ages 18-59 subject to the requirement to work at least 20 hours a week to stay on SNAP after three months.
For the USDA study, researchers looked at the period from November 2013 to March 2016, during the slow recovery from the 2008-09 recession, when nine states that reinstated the time limit for ABAWDs.
“We find that time limit reinstatement substantially reduced SNAP participation among people subject to the ABAWD time limit but did not substantially improve employment or earnings,” they concluded.
One year after reinstatement of the time limit, the most common outcome for ABAWDs “was not to receive SNAP benefits and not be employed,” said a USDA summary.
There is a general requirement for SNAP recipients ages 16-59 to register for work and to accept a suitable job if offered. ABAWDs aged 18-49 are restricted to 90 days of SNAP benefits in a three-year period unless they work at least 20 hours a week, perform workfare or are in a job-training programs.
ABAWDs were a small portion – 4-9 percent – of the caseload in the nine states that were studied. Their enrollment dropped in all states after the time limit was reinstated, ranging from a 5 percentage point decline in Colorado to 41 points in Vermont.
“The ABAWD time limit is of considerable policy interest yet research on the topic is relatively limited,” said the study.
The USDA report is available here.