The dramatic rise in recipients of U.S. supplemental nutrition assistance may be more about selling the program than feeding the needy | Marvin Olasky
Photo by Will Vragovic/ZUMA Press/Corbis
Until now, most children in the United States on Thanksgiving could look forward to a food-laden table that would visually represent the bounty of God brought to them by the hard work of parents. That is no longer the case.
A thoughtful study by Washington University professor Mark Rank projects that half of U.S. children are or will be in a household that uses food stamps at some point during their childhood. The study, "Estimating the Risk of Food Stamp Use and Impoverishment During Childhood," published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, also forecast that more than 90 percent of children with single parents will spend time in a household receiving food stamps.
Those are projections, but the facts themselves are ominous. Between 2002 and 2011 the number of Americans in the food stamp program—recently re-named the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP—rose from 18 million to 47 million, Given the rise in unemployment from 6 percent to 9 percent during those years, we could expect some change in the number of people using food stamps—but more than two-and-a-half times as many?
Helping by hurting
Can food stamps be regarded as economic stimulus? | Marvin Olasky
The Department of Agriculture in recent years has announced that every $5 billion spent on food stamps generates $9 billion in economic activity—which means that we purportedly help others by going on welfare. The Eureka Times-Standard reported that "the local economy" could be saved, "one food stamp at a time."
Newspapers uncritically accepted that figure, which originated with a 2002 study, "Effects of Changes in Food Stamp Expenditures Across the U.S. Economy." But are food stamps truly an economic stimulus? A closer look at that report shows that they are only if Washington borrows the money and increases our gargantuan federal deficit. Otherwise, they hurt the economy and increase unemployment.
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Issue: 
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