United States of Food Stamps: Food stamp usage has grown by 30,000,000 people since 2000. The economics of a food stamp recovery.
I was working through a few pages of Excel data regarding food stamp usage and a troubling milestone has now been breached. Since 2000, we have now added over 30,000,000 Americans to the food stamp program now labeled SNAP. What is even more difficult to understand is this number has moved up nearly unabated since 2000 even though if you believe the data, we were in full recovery from 2001 to 2007 until the financial crisis hit. In reality, what was happening was that the poor and working class were merely papering over their shrinking wealth by going into unsupportable debt. The fact that food stamp usage continues to move up is a very telling sign of our current economic situation. Over 47.77 million Americans are now on food stamps. In many parts of the country, Wal-Mart stores have adjusted store hours at the end of the month to coincide with food stamp debit cards (EBT) being reloaded allowing people to shop. I wanted to dive into the food stamp data a bit deeper.
Food stamp participation up by 30,000,000 people since 2000
I doubt anyone would ascribe growing food stamp usage with an actual economic recovery. That might be a bit of a stretch. When we chart this out, it becomes even more dramatic:
The Rest…HERE
