The Agricultural Act of 2014 required the establishment of a Multi-Agency Task Force to provide coordination and direction for USDA Foods administered by FNS. FNS submits this report to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture.

The Agricultural Act of 2014 required the establishment of a Multi-Agency Task Force to provide coordination and direction for USDA Foods administered by FNS. FNS submits this report covering the period of January 2021 through July 2022 to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture.

This study examines how the policies that determine benefit levels for the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program compare to current low-income spending patterns by analyzing the expenditures of low-income households across the United States in 2013 and 2014.

This report, the latest in a series of annual reports on WIC eligibility, presents 2014 national and state estimates of the number of people eligible for WIC benefits and the percent of the eligible population covered by the program, including estimates by participant category.

This report responds to the requirement of PL 110-246 to assess the effectiveness of state and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals. Direct certification is a process conducted by the states and by local educational agencies to certify eligible children for free meals without the need for household applications. 

This White Paper examines whether any additional means-tested programs might be feasible for use in the direct certification of school-age children participating in school meals or for verification of household income on meal applications.

This is the 11th in a series of annual reports that examines the administrative accuracy of eligibility determinations and benefit issuance for free or reduced-price meals in the National School Lunch Program.

This is the tenth in a series of annual reports to examine administrative errors incurred during the local educational agency’s (LEA) approval process of household applications for free and reduced-price meals in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). This report examines administrative error estimates in student certification for free and reduced-price NSLP meals.

This report responds to the requirement of PL 110-246 to assess the effectiveness of state and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals. Direct certification is a process conducted by the states and by local educational agencies to certify eligible children for free meals without the need for household applications. 

FNS developed the Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification (APEC) study series, which collects and analyzes data from a nationally representative sample of schools and school food authorities (SFAs) about every 5 years. APEC allows FNS to develop a national estimate of erroneous payment rates and amounts in three key areas: certification error, meal claiming error and aggregation error.  FNS recently completed APEC II, which collected data in School Year 2012-2013 and this report summarizes those findings.