Launched in 2024, Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT), or SUN Bucks, is a newly permanent federal program that provides low-income households with $120 ($40 a month) in grocery benefits per eligible child during the summer months when school is not in session. Food hardship increases among low-income households with children during the summer when they no longer have consistent access to free or reduced-price meals at school, and this program fills a key gap in summer food assistance. In 2024, 13 states chose not to participate in the Summer EBT program, including Oklahoma, despite consistently higher-than-average rates of food insecurity among households with children in the state. Oklahoma’s lack of participation would have left an estimated 403,000 children without benefits. However, three tribal nations in Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation, Chickasaw Nation, and Muscogee (Creek) Nation, stepped in to fill this gap in assistance and provided benefits to all eligible children in their service areas (children living within the boundaries of their reservations, regardless of their tribal affiliation, that have household incomes less than 185 percent of the federal poverty level), covering most of eastern Oklahoma (including Tulsa). Eligible children living outside of those service areas, including Oklahoma City, were not able to receive benefits, creating a significant disparity within the state.

WHAT WE DID 

To understand how households fared with and without Summer EBT, the Urban Institute surveyed a sample of households with eligible school-aged children across three separate school districts—Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) and Okmulgee Public Schools (OPS), representing households that could have received the benefit, and Oklahoma City Public School (OKCPS), representing households that did not have access. We chose a subset of schools within each district that had the highest rates of eligible students via participation in social safety net programs to ensure we reached the populations eligible for Summer EBT. We found recipients and nonrecipients to be statistically similar across most demographic characteristics, including race and ethnicity, school type, household size, employment levels, and retail food access in their local communities.   

KEY FINDINGS 

• Households that reported receiving Summer EBT had lower rates of household food insecurity by the end of the summer compared with those that did not receive the benefits (65 percent vs. 82 percent). 
• Recipients reported budgetary relief. Fifty-six percent of recipients reported needing to spend more on groceries to meet their needs during the summer compared with 79 percent of nonrecipients. 
• Eighty-two percent of recipients reported having enough access to fruits and vegetables during the summer, compared with 57 percent of nonrecipients (figure 1). 
• Three in four (74 percent) recipients agreed that Summer EBT freed up funds to use on other food items for the household.