1 of 10 in U.S. Sign Up for Food Stamps

Nearly one in 10 Americans depends on food stamps to make ends meet, the highest percentage of the population since the welfare program was revived by President John F. Kennedy more than 30 years ago.

The number of food stamp recipients has climbed to 25.4 million, almost 7 million more than just three years ago, as high unemployment and the long recession force more people onto the rolls.

And as the numbers swell, officials at food stamp offices notice a difference in the applicants--more of them are working people not dependent on other forms of welfare.

Walter Gay, 41, a Temple Hills, Md., accountant with nearly two decades of experience, is one.

Gay lost his $27,000-a-year job doing accounting on contract for a large social services group because of budget cuts.

“I’ve sent out more than 100 resumes” looking for work in the months since, but so far no luck,” he said. He has been living off his savings, borrowing from friends, eating with a girlfriend. Now, it’s “real tight. I’m now down to the nitty-gritty.”

At one time in his life, Gay said, he would have been ashamed to accept food stamps. “But when your situation changes, your way of thinking changes too.”

Another Temple Hills resident, Diane Richardson, 33, also was applying for the first time. A secretary for the Internal Revenue Service in Pennsylvania for eight years, she moved to the Washington area because of marriage. But a promised job with the IRS has not materialized, her husband’s earnings are modest and a baby is on the way.

“I just want enough to make ends meet” until a job appears, Richardson said. “If you can work, you shouldn’t abuse the system.”

While most people on food stamps are dependent on other forms of welfare, “the people who get food stamps alone are usually working people--working poor or unemployed,” said Robert McCormack, director of income maintenance programs at the Camp Springs, Md., office.

His office in May, 1991, had 1,498 households apply for food stamps only; last month that caseload was 1,895. “A lot of that reflects unemployment. A lot of people who I talk to are people who thought they’d never be in a welfare office,” McCormack said. Some “have lived very well for a while but from paycheck to paycheck. When they lose that paycheck they are in a totally new world.”

The rise in the food stamp rolls--the record has been broken every month since last November--is hardly a mystery. “Food stamp rolls always rise sharply in recessions and come down in recoveries,” said Robert Greenstein, a former director of the Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service, which runs the food stamp program.

Although no official figures are available to show what kind of people caused the current enrollment upsurge, “the states where the recession hit hardest also had the highest participation increase,” said Rep. Tony P. Hall (D-Ohio), chairman of the House Select Committee on Hunger.

Although the food stamp program is almost twice as large as the welfare program that provides cash for poor families with children, it is a relatively recent addition to the arsenal of federal welfare programs.

Although there was an experimental food stamp program in the late 1930s, the foundation of the current program came in 1961. Kennedy responded to the scenes of extreme hunger he had observed during the campaign by creating a pilot food stamp program as one of his first official acts in office. Over the years the program was gradually expanded, with Sens. George McGovern (D-S.D.) and Bob Dole (R-Kan.), leading the effort. In 1974 it became a broad nationwide program.

Under the program, families and individuals are eligible for food stamps if their net incomes after certain allowances are below the poverty line ($1,117 a month for a family of four) and their liquid assets, such as bank accounts, are under $2,000. The value of a person’s house is not counted nor is the value of a car if it is worth less than $4,500.

The program is broader than other income-tested programs because it contains no family-structure limits. Other welfare programs also require that recipients have far less income.

For a family of four with no other income, the maximum monthly allotment is $370 worth of food stamps.

Advocacy groups say the benefits are too low, and that increases in the amount of stamps lag behind the actual cost increases in food.

A criticism of the program from the conservative side was broadly suggested by President Bush when he said the Los Angeles riots prove his point that many liberal programs of the past do not work in helping the poor.

He never spelled out what he meant, but there is a well-developed conservative argument that the availability of welfare is, in the words of Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, “a strong disincentive to work and to marriage.”

Rector has calculated that an unwed mother with two children, putting a lot of these benefits together, can often get a benefit package worth $13,000 a year. That, he said, is an income that makes it unnecessary for a young pregnant woman to marry or work.

Robert Fersh, head of the Food Research and Action Center, responded: “We are aware of no studies whatsoever in which food stamps have been proven to serve as a work disincentive.” He said few people fit Rector’s model.

Brown University economist Robert Moffitt said food stamps do not “significantly discourage work.” He has completed a study finding that among women receiving cash welfare plus food stamps, the impact of the stamps is to reduce work effort by one hour a week; of the cash benefits, five hours.

Beyond the theories, at the Camp Springs office was Deborah West, a 30-year-old mother of two. She has always worked in medical offices, but she is having a hard time now finding a full-time job.

“I know I’m capable of providing on my own, but on jobs I’m competing with 50 to 70 people because of the recession,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll get a job soon--I always have. I don’t like taking welfare.”