Last month, President Donald Trump's Council of Economic Advisors issued a 64-page report calling for both new and stronger work requirements for participants in non-cash welfare programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programand Medicaid. In the weeks since the report was issued, the Trump administration approved Medicaid work requirements in several states, and congressional allies in the House of Representatives passed a 2018 farm bill that would subject more SNAP recipients to work requirements.
As the long-running debate over whether work requirements do, in fact, benefit low-income recipients of federal benefits rages on, a new report from the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution serves as a timely reminder that most participants in one prominent (and frequently targeted) federal program—SNAP—already do work. Many of these adults, however, transition frequently between working more than 20 hours a week (the minimum number of working hours required for SNAP eligibility in the House's proposed legislation), working less than 20 hours a week, being unemployed, or being out of the labor force altogether.
Using data from the federal Survey of Income and Program Participation, researchers Lauren Bauer and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach found that "approximately 18 percent of adults 18 to 59 without a child under the age of 6 switched between working more than 20 hours per week and another employment status." Among SNAP recipients, 21 percent oscillated between working at least 20 hours per week and falling into a different employment status. The chart below illustrates the employment status of three different demographic groups: adults aged 18 to 59, without a young child; adults aged 18 to 59, without a young child, not receiving disability benefits; and SNAP recipients aged 18 to 59, without a young child, not receiving disability benefits.
[For more on this story by DWYER GUNN, go to https://psmag.com/economics/he...-are-already-working]
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