Welfare Reform

Over the years, state agencies have operated federal welfare programs that have provided food stamps, cash assistance, and other benefits to needy households. Each program has its own set of regulations that the states must follow to determine a participant's eligibility and benefits. This is the third in a series of reports on the impact of welfare reform on the Food Stamp Program. GAO (1) identifies the number of states that have adopted or are planning to adopt the Simplified Food Stamp Program, (2) describes the concerns that may be preventing other states from adopting the simplified program, and (3) examines the impacts that the adoption of the simplified program may have on households' eligibility and benefits.

GAO noted that: (1) GAO's July 1998 survey indicated that seven states had implemented a limited, or mini, Simplified Food Stamp Program; (2) of the 45 states that had not implemented the simplified program, 6 were planning to do so; 30 indicated that they did not plan to do so; and the 9 remaining states were uncertain about their plans; (3) one of the six states--Arkansas--was planning to adopt the simplified program, but subsequently implemented a full, or more comprehensive, program that establishes a uniform set of eligibility requirements for both food stamp and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) assistance; (4) the states that had not implemented the simplified program cited several concerns that discouraged them: (a) increasing caseworkers' burden by creating a third set of eligibility criteria for a simplified program that are different from those associated with the separately administered TANF and the Food Stamp Program; (b) restricting the options for designing a simplified program by requiring it to be cost neutral; and (c) other Welfare Reform Act requirements that had a higher priority; (5) the simplified program would have little or no impact on either the number of households participating in the Food Stamp Program or on the amount of their benefits, according to the majority of states that have and have not implemented a simplified program; (6) the simplified program has limited impact, according to one state, primarily because a relatively small number of households participate in it compared with the state's total food stamp population; and (7) according to another state, since most TANF households also receive assistance under the regular Food Stamp Program, there is little change in total benefit costs as a result of the state's adoption of the simplified program.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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