Food Stamp Program

The Household Definition Is Not a Major Source of Caseworker Errors Gao ID: RCED-90-183 July 26, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Food Stamp Program, focusing on whether the household definition caseworkers use to compute food stamp benefits is a significant cause of caseworker errors.

GAO found that: (1) in fiscal year (FY) 1988, caseworkers' incorrect eligibility determinations relating to household definition resulted in between $23 million and $75 million in food stamp errors; (2) the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) tracks errors which lead to improper benefit determinations and groups them into three categories; (3) for FY 1988, FNS estimated that mistakes occurred in about 23.9 percent of all food stamp cases, which resulted in total erroneous payments of about $1 billion; and (4) the FNS method for categorizing food stamp errors has been useful for its program management purposes, but does not effectively track caseworker errors.



The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.