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Proposer: U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Macroeconomic and Distributional Effects of the Scheduled October 2021 Expansion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

The USDA re-evaluation of the Thrifty Food Plan increases the average SNAP benefit by $36.24 per person per month starting in October 2021. PWBM projects that the increase in SNAP spending lowers GDP by 0.2 percent by 2031. People who receive SNAP as well as older working age individuals are helped by policy change while young people with high incomes as well as rich retirees are harmed due to lower future wages and a fall in the return to capital. For more information, please see our full analysis.