Five States Will Pay Their SNAP Benefits in Full on June 1st

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As you already know, each state has the authority to determine how to manage its own calendar of food stamps, known as SNAP benefits. By mandate of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and despite the fact that this agency administers the food stamp funds, each state or territory that distributes them chooses exactly how to distribute the payments.

The reason behind this is that the United States is a federal system, which means that power is divided between the federal government and the state governments. The SNAP Benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) program is a federal program, but administered locally.

States have different priorities and urgencies in terms of the population that needs this help. In addition, each state has managed to determine over the years, through studies, analysis, and the field work of social workers, which are the most effective experiences to curb poverty and hunger. For example, a state with a large rural population may need different programs than a state with a large urban population.

Flexibility to Deliver SNAP Benefits According to the State’s Realities

State flexibility also allows states to experiment with different approaches to reducing hunger and poverty among the neediest. This program is effective and its effects can be noticed in the statistics: a study by the USDA itself found that SNAP benefits lifted 3.1 million people out of poverty in 2019.

Another analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that SNAP reduced child poverty by 11% and overall poverty by 5% on average in the United States.

Finally, a study by the University of California at Berkeley found that SNAP benefits reduced the extreme poverty rate by 20% in recent years. The data are overwhelming and that is why food stamps should be a bipartisan and trans-governmental priority, that is, that they continue from one government to another without interruptions as a state policy.

Why Are There Five States That Will All Pay Snap Benefits on the Same Day?

From everything we’ve said before, you’ll know that not all states start and end distributing SNAP benefits on the same dates every month. In the state of Alabama, for example, payments start on the 4th and end on the 23rd of each month. In Florida they cover almost the entire month, starting on the 1st and ending on the 28th.

But there are five states in particular that, due to the number of people who receive these benefits, send money directly to all their beneficiaries on the same day: all of them will receive their EBT transfer on June 1. These states are: Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, Rhode Island and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
And it’s just that these states have pretty small populations of food stamp recipients. And the numbers are as follows:

Vermont: 54,692 beneficiaries
Alaska: 42,260 beneficiaries
North Dakota: 28,371 beneficiaries
Rhode Island: 127,793 beneficiaries
U.S. Virgin Islands: 33,289 beneficiaries

These numbers are particularly manageable for their states, which are also small in overall population compared to other states with giant SNAP benefit populations. Such is the case of the state of California, which has the largest population of food stamp recipients, which in that state is known as CalFresh: there are 8.7 million participants in the West Coast giant.

It is followed by New York with 6.6 million participants who receive funds on their EBT card every month to buy food and keep their family away from food risk.