According to the USDA, about 42 million people around America receive monthly benefits from the SNAP. This is a federal program that provides food for low-income households. The average amount of money given to households is $187 per person. In simpler terms, one in eight Americans per month receive SNAP benefits.
A rough estimate of 5 million households are receiving a total of $12 in benefits this November.
SNAP provides people with money for basic needs, such as food and beverages, also commonly referred to as food stamps. Millions of families across the country weren’t receiving their benefits due to the recent government shutdown.
The shutdown began on Oct. 1 and ended on Nov. 12. The Trump administration said that the program’s contingency funds couldn’t be used to cover their regular benefits, however, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has stated that this position contradicts “the law and prior practice.”
During previous shutdowns, SNAP funds have been available by contingency funds, so why couldn’t they be funded during the shutdown?
Many people received nothing from SNAP while the shutdown was ongoing, while others had gotten little to nothing.
State lawmakers and governors had no prior warning and scrambled to fund food stamps on their own. But most people only got partial funding or had to rely on food programs.
Even more disastrous, households that receive SNAP benefits are often those with children. About 30% of households with children rely on the program.
Almost 15 million households could’ve lost their SNAP benefits, around 2 million of them being rural, if the program had continued to run dry. That’s around 15 million households who wouldn’t know what they would do about their food funding this month if the shutdown had continued.
SNAP is a crucial lifeline for low-income families. As soon as people lose their SNAP benefits, their income decreases drastically.
With these conditions, millions of people were and still are at risk of potentially losing their benefits due to new restrictions in the next few years and facing a variety of financial issues. Once the government shutdown ended, state officials were able to issue back their citizen’s SNAP benefits.
Almost 35 million Americans lived in households that were suffering from food insecurity in 2021. Recent reports have stated that in 2025, more than 40 million people are in the position of where they’re in food-insecure households, which only grew without SNAP in effect throughout the entirety of the shutdown.
This can lead to food insecurity in children who are in these households. It can lead to malnutrition, which can have a variety of health risks and consequences. Additionally, it leads to increased amounts of stress, particularly financial stress, which can result in paying for rent late, not being able to pay for utilities or in the worst-case scenario, people becoming homeless.
This would mean children have to rely on less nutritious foods and cheaper meals. This could potentially cause stunted growth and a weakened immune system.
After the shutdown ended, most SNAP payments were delayed until Nov. 20, but all recipients are now getting their full payments and their EBT cards are working as of Nov. 16.
However, this recent shutdown brings up the question of if the government will shut down again soon and what people could do to prevent this from affecting them at the same extent.
Food insecurity is a huge problem for many people at this period in time because they don’t know how long they’ll have to stretch their remaining resources or if it will be a constant issue in their lives.
Millions of people are still suffering from the consequences that the shutdown had on their lives, whether it’s from being laid off during the time, having worsened health problems due to not being able to get what they might have needed to get better or to stabilize their condition. Even small local businesses who rely on SNAP funded customers are suffering economically.
SNAP is fundamental because even people who aren’t involved with the program feel the effects of its absence.
