House Republicans have passed their version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which puts forth several changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). But free school meal access has become increasingly intertwined with SNAP. Declines in SNAP receipt can reduce the number of students eligible for school meals without an application and can increase costs for schools providing free meals.
Why This Matters
To reduce duplicative paperwork for schools, students receiving SNAP or Medicaid automatically qualify for free school meals. The changes to SNAP and Medicaid that House Republicans passed in their recent spending bill would have downstream effects on student access to free school meals. Declines in SNAP receipt can reduce the number of students who are eligible for school meals without an application and can increase costs for schools providing universal free meals.
What I Found
I estimate that the changes to SNAP could mean that 7.5 million students are at risk of losing individual access to free meals based on the potential loss of their school or state’s universal free school meal policy attributable to increased costs. At least 181,000 students might need to revert to school meal applications, something that has always been associated with stigma and has become less common because of the rise in universal free meal programs such as the Community Eligibility Provision in the wake of the pandemic.
Research shows that providing free meals for all students helps students feel safer and that school is a welcoming place, leading to higher student achievement and better student discipline. Thus, there is a loss to all students when a school can no longer offer universal free meals. Sixteen million students in sampled states are enrolled at schools that would be at risk of losing the ability to participate in universal free school meal programs if the proposed changes to SNAP take effect.
How I Did It
I use a sample of 37 states and the District of Columbia. I calculate the number of school-age children who could lose access to SNAP using data from the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service and Mathematica’s 2023 SNAP Quality Control database. Because many students are also identified for direct certification through their household’s participation in Medicaid, I use 2023 American Community Survey data to identify the percentage of non-Medicaid, SNAP-enrolled children in each state. I use 2023–24 school-level meal eligibility data from the Common Core of Data via the Urban Institute’s Education Data Portal and data from the Food Research & Action Center’s Community Eligibility Provision database. I decrease the number of directly certified students in each state by the total number of non-Medicaid, SNAP-enrolled students that I estimate would lose SNAP benefits and then calculate the new school-level direct certification rates.
