By Sarah Melotte and Tim Marema
The pause in food stamp benefits that will hit Saturday, November 1 will disproportionately hurt rural families.
Other groups that will be more affected by the Trump administration’s freeze on benefits are households with children and residents of the core counties of the nation’s larger urban areas.
These findings are based on a Daily Yonder analysis of data from the American Community Survey conducted by the Census Bureau.
Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, is halting because Congress has not approved a spending bill and the Trump administration, unlike previous administrations, has refused to use contingency funds to keep the program running during the government shutdown.
Rural families top the list of groups that will be affected by the freeze in SNAP benefits. The Daily Yonder found that 13.7% of rural households receive SNAP benefits, compared to 11.4% of metropolitan households.
But the story is more complex than simply a rural/urban split, as the graph below shows.
Although rural households are more likely to receive SNAP benefits, the residents of the core counties of major and medium-sized metropolitan areas have similar participation rates. In core counties of major metros (populations above 1 million), 13.1% of households receive SNAP benefits, while 12.7% of core counties in medium-sized metros (populations of 250,000 to under 1 million) do.
The areas least likely to be receiving SNAP benefits are suburbs of both major and medium-sized metro areas. Only 9.1% of households in suburban counties of major metros receive SNAP benefits, and 10.5% of suburban counties in medium-sized metros do.
Households with Children
Our analysis also found that households with children are far more likely to receive SNAP benefits. Nationally, households with children make up about 30% of total households, while they comprise almost half (47%) of all households that receive SNAP. This trend held true across urban and rural counties.
The disproportionate rate of households with children that receive SNAP benefits is likely the result of a combination of factors. Eligibility for food stamps is based on income (typically 130% of the Federal Poverty Level, which comes out to about $2,221 a month for a family of three) and household size. Households with more members have a higher income threshold to qualify for assistance because there are more mouths to feed. Also, residents who do not have dependents face additional restrictions to participating in the program.
The halt in SNAP benefits comes on the heels of the nearly month-long federal government shutdown brought on by gridlocked negotiations over the Trump administration’s 2025 budget reconciliation bill. On October 10, the USDA told the state agencies that distribute SNAP to halt the program until further notice, citing concerns over insufficient funds. Twenty-five states are suing the Trump administration over its refusal to keep the program funded during the shutdown.
The Trump administration says that the program’s contingency funds cannot be used to cover regular benefits, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities states that this position contradicts “the law and prior practice.” During past government shutdowns, including during Trump’s first term, contingency funds have been used to keep SNAP benefits available.
Nearly 15 million households (2.4 million of which are rural) will lose SNAP benefits if the program runs dry.
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