FNS Documents & Resources

The Food Stamp Program provides millions of Americans with the means to purchase food for a nutritious diet. This report presents the characteristics of food stamp households nationwide in fiscal year 1999 (October 1998 to September 1999). 

The National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program are central parts of a national policy designed to safeguard the nutritional well-being of the Nation’s children. Despite the progress that has been achieved over the years in enhancing the quality of school meals, results of research conducted in the early 1990s indicated that school meals, on balance, were not meeting certain key nutritional goals. 

The Food Stamp Program helps needy families purchase food so that they can maintain a nutritious diet. Families are eligible for the program if their financial resources fall below certain income and asset thresholds. This report concentrates on trends in the participation rates since 1994. It focuses on trends in the rates before and after welfare reform, and throughout much of the economic expansion of the 1990s.

This report examines the dietary knowledge and attitudes of low-income individuals, including FSP participants and nonparticipants, describes their dietary intake, and estimates participation-dietary intake relationship. 

The NSLP offers free and reduced-price school meals to students from eligible households. Households with incomes at or below 130 percent of poverty are eligible for free meals, and households with incomes between 131 percent and 185 percent of poverty are eligible for reduced-price meals. Traditionally, to receive these benefits, households had to complete and submit application forms to schools or be directly certified. Direct certification, on the other hand, is a method of eligibility determination that does not require families to complete school meal applications. Instead, school officials use documentation from the local or state welfare agency that indicates that a household participates in AFDC or food stamps as the basis for certifying students for free school meals.

This is the second report in a series of publications that presents estimates of the percentage of eligible persons, by state, who participate in the Food Stamp Program. This issue presents food stamp participation rates for states in September 1997 and the changes in state rates between September 1994 and September 1997. This information can be used to examine states’ performance over this period and help understand the effects on food stamp participation rates of a strong economy with expanding job opportunities and the very early consequences of welfare reform and food stamp changes that were brought about by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.

The purpose of this study is to provide FNS with descriptive information about how States have elected to provide nutrition education and information to food stamp recipients and eligibles.

This report duplicates the precise methodology of the earlier analysis with more than 10,000 new investigations to generate an estimate for the 1996 - 1998 calendar year period.

This study examines the experience of states in developing and operating special-purpose savings account programs for low-income households. The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) is interested in the use of special-purpose accounts for the low-income population--especially for households receiving food stamps--as a means of promoting self-sufficiency . These accounts enable low-income persons to accumulate savings for specified purposes such as education, home purchase, home improvement, and business start-up. In many program initiatives, the account holder qualifies for matching funds to enable a more rapid accumulation of savings, as long as the account balances are used for the specified purposes. Such matched accounts are typically called a individual development accounts or IDAs.

This report provides information about the demographic and economic circumstances of food stamp households. On average, about 19.8 million people living in 8.2 million households received food stamps in the United States each month in fiscal year 1998. Food stamp households are a diverse group. Because food stamps are available to most low-income households with few resources, regardless of age, disability status, or family structure, recipients represent a broad cross-section of the nation's poor.