More than 1.2 million children lost access to food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program between July 2025 and 2026, according to a new analysis.
While it’s too early to know exactly why so many children have lost SNAP eligibility in the past year, experts say that the drop is a cause for worry. They also told PBS News that it’s unlikely that the need for food assistance has dropped.
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“For kids to lose that benefit is really devastating,” said Priya Fielding-Singh, director of policy and programs at George Washington University’s Global Food Institute.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research group that tracks enrollment rates, considers its estimate to be an undercount. The number actually could be more than 1.5 million children who have lost food aid, CBPP believes.
Experts attribute the drop in participation to cuts made by President Donald Trump’s big tax and spending bill, which became law more than a year ago and slashed at least $1 trillion in federal spending from the nation’s social safety net. Among the changes, the law imposed stricter work requirements for adults on SNAP and shifted more of the program’s costs to states, based on their payment error rates. Nationwide, some 5 million people overall have lost SNAP access.
“SNAP is not, despite the name, supplemental,” Fielding-Singh said. “SNAP is essential. SNAP is critical. SNAP is how families feed their kids enough food.”
A closer look at the data
The decline is particularly alarming because it’s been so rapid, said Joseph Llobrera, CBPP’s senior research director for food assistance.
SNAP enrollment traditionally rises and falls in response to the strength of the economy and the amount of need. With a strong economy, SNAP participation drops. But the current economic conditions don’t indicate that people don’t need assistance, Llobrera told PBS News.
“The data that we’re seeing now is that the declines are so significant and rapid that it’s really unlikely that this is because there’s a reduced need,” Fielding-Singh said. There’s been no dramatic change in unemployment or improvement in living wages to indicate fewer people need SNAP, she added.
CBPP analyzed data from the 25 states where it is publicly available and tracked enrollment from July 2025 through each state’s most recent published month. In those states, which account for roughly 60% of all SNAP participants, the analysis found:
- Children make up 43% of the total drop in SNAP participants
- Around 1.2 million fewer children have SNAP benefits
- Children account for between 28% and 77% of those who were disenrolled from SNAP
To estimate the number of children in the remaining states, CBPP took the low end of that range and applied it to the total number of people who lost SNAP benefits over the remainder of the year. The estimate is a conservative one, Llobrera said.
Some critics of the massive food safety program are touting the major drop as a win, indicating a reduced reliance on federal assistance. Others argue many of the people who’ve lost benefits were part of a COVID-19 pandemic-era expansion, including waived work requirements and a temporary increase in benefits.
With the expiration of those changes, SNAP enrollment should be dropping, said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, but “not as much as it is.”
Why have children lost benefits?
Trump’s sweeping law directly removes some children from the SNAP rolls, but other changes under the law might be having an indirect effect.
Some legal immigrants, including refugees and people granted asylum, lost SNAP eligibility at the end of last year. The administration’s broader immigration crackdown may have also had a “chilling effect” on eligible or current participants seeking the aid because they fear drawing attention to their immigration status, according to a July brief produced by researchers at Center for Science in the Public Interest and George Washington University’s Global Food Institute. Undocumented immigrants remain ineligible for SNAP, although they can apply if their children are U.S. citizens.
Experts say two major changes in the bill likely bear most of the responsibility for fewer children having food aid as a new school year starts: the implementation of expanded work requirements and heightened scrutiny over how states are managing the program. The administrative burden of both work requirements and additional state certifications could affect families’ ability to stay in the program.
People enrolled in SNAP between the ages of 18 and 64 who are also able to work and whose youngest child is 14 or older must now demonstrate that they’re working or in a work program for 80 hours in a month within three months of receiving benefits. If the requirements are not met, people will lose their benefits for the next three years until they come into compliance.
That can be a tough requirement, since many people sign up for SNAP after becoming unemployed, Bauer said.
Some families may have lost benefits after adults with older children weren’t able to meet the requirements or had difficulty documenting their work, she added. Bauer’s research has shown that most people with children who are on SNAP either work or are searching for work, she said.
Even for people with younger dependent children, adding another barrier (such as proving they have dependents) can help discourage enrollment, Llobrera said.
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The other reason experts suspect children may have lost benefits has to do with a provision that isn’t active yet.
On Oct. 1, 2027, states will be required to shoulder more of the cost of their SNAP programs, depending on how high their error rate is, which is how much a participant is over- or underpaid for their benefits.
States are trying to figure out how to ensure accurate payments to households to keep their error rates down, Bauer said. Her research has shown that the error rates fluctuate wildly year to year, however.
It’s not possible to prove that the threat of high error rates is directly affecting the decline in SNAP recipients, Llobrera said. But he’s heard from both states and advocates that agencies are requiring significantly more documentation — and with greater frequency — to enroll or recertify oneself in the program.
It’s not a payment error to deny eligible families SNAP benefits.
“I think that states are using that denial on entry or denial at recertification to try and make it easier for themselves to control payment errors,” Bauer said.
What happens if children lose access to SNAP
When families lose access to food assistance, parents tend to go hungry so their children can eat, Fielding-Singh said.
There’s also substantial research that food insecurity is harmful to children. One 2025 report in the journal Nutrients found strong evidence that food insecurity leads to worse overall health outcomes for children, including nutrient deficiencies with long-lasting effects, developmental delays and behavioral problems, as well as poorer social-emotional skills, like playing well with others.
Drops in SNAP enrollment can have broader effects too. SNAP eligibility can often be used to determine eligibility for other social safety net programs, including WIC, a food aid program that provides supplemental food for pregnant women, infants and children, and the National School Lunch Program, for which children are automatically eligible if they qualify for SNAP.
The Community Eligibility Provision allows schools to provide free meals to children in low-income areas without requiring additional applications, but only applies to schools with enough eligible children. SNAP is one of the ways children can be eligible.
“As SNAP participation falls, some schools may have a harder time qualifying for CEP or financially sustaining CEP,” Fielding-Singh said.
She’s heard from some schools that “they’re finding it harder to financially sustain offering these meals universally to kids.”
As children, and adults, lost access to SNAP, the U.S. government also canceled its annual Household Food Security Report last year, calling it “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous” and saying it “failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder.”
The federal report tracked changes to food insecurity, and its cancellation means 2024 will be the last available year for national data on the topic — even as overall SNAP enrollment continues to decline.
