The U.S. uses a food stamp program to tackle food insecurity. Should Canada?

West Virginian Meghan Hullingerisa single mother of fourwho, despite workingafull-time job, says shehas only about $45 left over each month after paying most of herbasic living expenses.

So for the past six years, Hullingerhas been usinga governmentissueddebit card at her nearby grocery to purchase food for her family.

She is one of the millions of Americans who use thatcard as part of the U.S.Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) a federal food security program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)that provides monthlyfunds specifically for people to buy food.SNAP households are expected to spend about 30 per cent of their own resources on food. In 2023, the estimated average benefit for one person was around $195 per month.

"Without this program,not just families like mine, but literally thousands of families in America would be on the brink of starvation," she said."That's literally how we eat. Ithink that the program is so beneficial for families like mine."

In 2022, more than 41 million people in the U.S. purchased food with SNAP benefits, considered the largest program working to fight hunger in America.

The program, known tomany by its earlier iteration "food stamps,"in which recipients used actual coupons to purchase food, has no similar nation-wide equivalent in Canada. And while many U.S.-based food security experts laud SNAP, some of their Canadian counterparts don'tbelieve the country would benefit from a similar program that offers assistance tied specifically to food.

"It's been shown that people who receive SNAP are better off thanpeople that don't," said Valerie Tarasuk,aprofessor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto, who also leadsPROOF, a research programinvestigating policy interventions to reduce food insecurity in Canada.

"But still, a substantial proportion of people who receive SNAP are food insecure."

It can be difficult to compare food insecurity rates country to country, based on methodology and definitions.In Canada in 2022, according to PROOF, 6.9 million people in the 10 provinces, including almost 1.8 million children, lived in a food-insecure household.

Last year, a record number of people used food banks in Canada, and about a third of them are children.

Meanwhile, theUSDA data show that in 2021,13.5 million U.S. households were food insecure at some time during the year.

'One of the largest tools'

Yetsome advocates suggest those numbers would be worse if not for SNAP.

"The reality is, is that it's the most responsive federal program we have that provides assistance to families,"said Elyssa Schmier, a spokeswoman for MomsRising, a U.S. based advocacy groupworking to increase family economic security..

"It's also one of the largest tools we have to combat poverty and hunger in the country."

"I know that families in Canada are struggling. It was very surprising to hear that [Canada doesn't]have any sort of dedicated nutrition programs in place, especially to help families with children."

SNAP advocatescite studies that suggest the programdoes reduce food insecurity.

Researchersat the Urban Institute, for example,used national survey data from the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s to show thatSNAP reduces the likelihood of being food insecure by roughly 30 percent.

Lauren Bauer, afellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution whose expertise includesfederal nutrition assistance programs said it'sself evident that when you give families sort of dedicated resources to purchase food, they then spend more of their household budget on food.

"Food securitygoes up, food insecurity goes down and hunger ... goes down."

Bauer said other research has shown that SNAP has benefited child development, lead to increased high school graduation rates, and financial independence.

"It's clear evidence that the way SNAP itself works, that SNAP is one of the causes of that."

The program does have its critics. Republicans have decried the cost, which in 2023, is expected to be around $127 billion. And some suggest that too much of the benefits are used for unhealthy food, fuelling obesity problems in the country.

Others complain that the amount people receive isn't enough and needs to be boosted.Indeed, abig area of disagreement during the debt-ceiling deal was work requirements for SNAP, which will be increased under the agreement, but certain vulnerable groups were exempted.

Matthew Little,assistant professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria, saidthat funnelling money to existing income supports would be much more prudent than a new government program that would come with a huge administrative burden.

Little saidwhile SNAP maymay alleviate food insecurity in the short term, it shouldn'tbe considered a sustainable long term strategy. What needs to be addressed, he said, are the root causes of poverty by increasing wages, reducing wage inequality, progressive taxation schemes and income supports.

"And that's kind of the strategy that we've taken more generally in Canada to poverty alleviationwhich is kind of the reason why we don't have this food assistance is that we take a cash-based approach in Canada," he said.

"I'm supportive, I think, of that strategy because it provides more freedom and choice to the consumers to be able to make the financial decisions that they want to make depending on their needs at the household level."

Why tie assistance to food?

Tarasukagreed that increasing the amount of benefits already in place, she said, would be much more efficient that creating a whole new infrastructure for SNAP.

She said there's no need to tie the cash benefit specifically to food, and thattheirresearch has found no evidence that people who are food insecure wouldn't spend money on food if they were just given a a cash benefit.

"There's no no evidence in the United States or Canada that says we're better off tying a benefit to food purchasing than just giving them a benefit," she said.

For example, her researchfound a one-third drop in the prevalence of severe food insecurity among families with childrenfollowingimplementation fo the Canada Child Benefit, a federal subsidymeant to help with thecost of raising children.

ButBauer said theproblem with cash benefits is thatthey're not as well targeted and arenot based on a market basket of groceries, which allows the SNAP program to adjust to risingfood costs.

"So the way the benefit is actually calculated is meant to be about food," she said. "And these untargeted programs, because that's not incorporated into any calculation, are kind of untethered to reality."