A recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) caught my attention last week. It found that across 12 states with available data, the number of children receiving SNAP food assistance has fallen by more than 700,000 since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) was enacted in July 2025. That’s already a staggering number, and it is likely to increase as additional constraints are implemented.
I shared the report on LinkedIn, and—like with most posts I share about the social safety net—some commentors began to reply that the people and families who use these programs are unworthy, lazy, or a drag on the country and the economy. One of the first read:
“Children” includes working age adults under 22, and nearly 60% of the change took place in states with high levels of out-migration. Between the work requirements and other system changes I think it’s safe to say 700k “children” are not suffering.
Personally, I find these comments dismissive and condescending to the millions of people and families who rely on the safety net for support. I feel like we as a society should be able to at least agree that children should have enough food to eat. So yes, when 700,000 children don’t have enough food to eat, I think that’s a problem.
In my experience, people who post messages like this never bring data to bear. They make claims like “60% of the change took place in states with high levels of out-migration” but don’t cite the source or fully think through the implications of that message.
I want to break down what the data actually say.
First, on the age range. One can easily argue about how to define “child.” Largely, the country has settled on age 18 as the legal definition of an adult, a cutoff I won’t argue here. But when it comes to food assistance, a steadfast cutoff in state and federal policies can put young people at risk of not having enough food to eat.
CBPP includes a caveat that “Ohio defines children as individuals under age 22 who receive SNAP benefits and live with a parent.” There are no notes or caveats for other states, so I assume those other states use the standard age 18 cutoff that the USDA uses to distinguish between adults and children for safety net programs. So no, the study does not define children as working age adults under 22. Ohio makes that allowance, but that’s just 1 of the 12 states.
Because the states in the study have not reported current data on the change in SNAP participation by age groups, we cannot measure the exact change in the number of kids up to age 14, for example, who have lost access to the program. But the USDA does estimate that roughly 40% of SNAP participants under the age of 18 nationally are under age 5. Applying that ratio to the CBPP numbers, we can estimate that roughly 292,000 children under 5 have lost food assistance across these 12 states alone. At the average SNAP benefit amount of $187.91/month, that translates to roughly $55 million in lost food support.
Second, on migration. The Census Bureau publishes state-to-state migration data annually. The data do not include breakdowns by age, so it’s not entirely clear who is moving, whether an individual adult, a family of four, or others. But the original post didn’t make that distinction either, so let’s look at the straightforward inter-state migration estimates.
In 2024, more than 7 million people moved from one state to another (I include Puerto Rico here but exclude people who are moving from a foreign country or from another US Island Area). In that year, 14 states (plus Washington, DC) experienced more people moved out of the state than into it. These states included populous ones like California and New York, but also smaller states like Louisiana and Iowa.
Among the 12 states in the CBPP analysis, 7 had a net gain from migration while the rest experienced a net migration loss. Totaling migration across all 12 states, we see that 51,000 more people moved into these states than left them.
Further, SNAP participation has declined in nearly every state over the past 12 months, meaning children aren’t leaving one state en masse to obtain benefits in another. Instead, we can see that federal policy (mostly through OBBBA) and state policies (often in response to OBBBA) are the leading causes of SNAP program cuts.
Third, on young people working. In a follow-up post, the original poster made the claim that 15-21-year-olds should be working rather than receiving benefits through SNAP (I’m paraphrasing here). Two points are worth making in response.
First, a person (younger or older) can work and still require support through programs like SNAP and Medicaid. More than 30 million households—many of whom who work—receive benefits through one of those programs and 12 million participate in both. OBBBA added stricter work requirements to both SNAP and Medicaid, which estimates suggest will result in large declines in program participation, even among people who are working or want to work.
Second, just because a program requires work or a person wants to work, doesn’t mean there are jobs available. The unemployment rate varies substantially around the country, ranging from under 3% in some states to well above 5% in others. Younger people likely face more difficulty to finding work—the unemployment rate stands at 16.6% and 13.4% for 16–17-year olds and for 18-19-year olds, respectively. Those are the highest rates of any age group, and both rates have climbed since mid-2023.
I’ll admit that this post is likely excessive. But when we have objective, reliable, and timely data, it’s worth understanding how policies affect the people around us. SNAP provides food to millions of children. That shouldn’t be contentious, especially when we have the data to back it up.
