| Last week we posted about the widespread use of the school lunch program as an indicator of poverty in Texas.
This week, the Texas Tribune released an interactive map showing food stamp use in Texas - another useful measure of poverty - with a detailed breakdown by county.
Much like eligibility for the school lunch program, eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is set at 130% of the federal poverty line, so looking at SNAP enrollment gives you a sense of how many households are at or near the poverty line. But SNAP recipients could be anyone, whereas (clearly) only households with school-age children can enroll for the school lunch program. So basically school lunch enrollment shows us how many children are living in households at or near poverty, while SNAP enrollment shows us how many households generally are at or near this threshold.
That being said, a few interesting highlights from the Tribune data:
- This month, over 1.5 million Texans will receive food stamps. And near one-third of the families eligible for the program are not actually signed up to receive benefits.
- Not surprisingly, the counties with the most households receiving food stamps are those surrounding the major cities. But there's also a high concentration in the Valley, especially considering the proportionately lower population there. For instance, Harris County has 243,000 SNAP households, but these households only make up 14% of the population. On the other hand, in counties near the border like Starr County, there are only 9,407 SNAP recipients, and in Brooks County there are 1,150, but in both of these counties SNAP recipients make up one-third of the population.
- Travis County has actually seen its percentage of SNAP recipients decline. From 2005 to present, the percentage has dropped an impressive 31%. In neighboring Williamson County, though, the percentage of SNAP recipients has increased by over 50% since 2005.
Campaigning in Iowa, Rick Perry called Iowa's high proportion of food stamp recipients a "testament to widespread misery" caused by the Obama Administration. But in doing so, he ignores the 1.5 million-plus households in his own state at or near the poverty line - not to mention the $800 million of economic impact the program brings to Texas. |
