SNAP Benefits Don’t Cover A Basic Meal Anywhere In NJ

By Benjamin J. Hulac | Washington Correspondent For the NJ Spotlight News

WASHINGTON — Benefits from the nation’s largest food aid program are not nearly enough to cover an inexpensive meal almost anywhere in the U.S., including in any of New Jersey’s 21 counties.

The average cost of a “modestly priced meal” was $3.41 last year, 20% more than the maximum benefit under the program, called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, according to new analysis by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research group, compiled.

The program, formerly called food stamps, helps about 42 million Americans buy food every year. In New Jersey, about 800,000 people are enrolled in SNAP.

Cuts to SNAP may hit NJ beneficiaries hardThe average SNAP benefit is a bit more than $6 per person per day.

The researchers compared per-meal benefits under SNAP in 2024 with county-level data. The Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, adjusts SNAP benefits every budget year based on inflation and food prices. Foods that might be included in a “modestly priced meal” that could be purchased with SNAP benefits include, for example, dark leafy greens, poultry and fruit.

Urban found food prices rose about 24% last year, versus 2023. “As a result, families faced household food insecurity at a rate nearing that experienced at the height of the Great Recession,” the group wrote in a post explaining the results, alluding to the recession that followed the 2008 financial crash.

More limits on SNAP

The already thin food program will get thinner under a new federal law that slashes about $186 billion from SNAP during the next decade, about a 20% cut from the program overall.

President Donald Trump pushed that bill through the Republican-controlled Congress and signed it into law last month.

Within the New Jersey congressional delegation, every Republican voted for the bill and every Democrat voted against it.

About 400,000 New Jersey households could lose some or all of their food benefits under that law, which, for the first time in U.S. history, shifted some costs of implementing SNAP to the states.

The new federal law could cost New Jersey between $100 million and $300 million, on top of $78 million for county governments in the state, according to Sarah Adelman, commissioner of the state’s Department of Human Services.

New SNAP requirements

Some of the 800,000 now enrolled in New Jersey could lose SNAP benefits once work requirements Congress wrote into the law go into effect. New rules will force people enrolled to be working or volunteering to get benefits.

Strategic Republican delay of deepest service cuts?Historically, work requirements often end up removing people from government programs like SNAP, Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, said in a recent interview with NJ Spotlight News.

Most SNAP enrollees already work, are students or are taking care of someone, such as an ailing relative.

Republicans delayed when some cuts in the law, including to SNAP and the national health insurance program Medicaid, would kick in until after the 2026 mid-term elections, while front-loading temporary tax incentives for individuals.

Until 2021, daily SNAP benefits were $4.80. After, they were raised to $6.20, the current rate.

The realities of SNAP in NJ

In 2012, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) tried living on SNAP for a week, when the rate was $4.32 a day and he was mayor of Newark.

In Essex County, the Urban Institute estimates, citing federal data, a modest meal is 48% more expensive than SNAP benefits provide — the largest gap of any county in the state.

By comparison, an average meal in Cumberland County is 20% more expensive, the smallest gap in New Jersey.

Only in 41 counties of the 3,144 in the nation are meals cheap enough for benefits to cover them, and those counties are largely in

Texas, predominantly in South Texas along the border with Mexico, and Hawaii, though that state receives more generous benefits.

The county where benefits cover the least food? Across the Hudson River: New York, N.Y.

— Map by Genesis Obando