These 5 Counties Have The Most Food Stamp Recipients In New York
The long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with record inflation have done damage to the pocketbook of many New Yorkers.
In fact, while unemployment levels are reported to be at record lows, the labor force participation rate is also quite a bit lower than average.
These plus other factors have caused the number of people who qualify and receive public assistance benefits to increase over the last few years.
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Among those benefits that have increased is the SNAP Program. SNAP or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is better known by its former name, Food Stamps.
New York State recently announced a large increase in the amount of government funds that are available to recipients of the program, and those that receive food stamps are now starting to receive extra benefits. Most of those recipients are now receiving the maximum benefit possible based on their family size.
New York State spends a lot of money funding the Food Stamp program, but exactly how much does New York spend, and what counties in New York account for the most money?
SNAP Usage By County In New York
Every month the New York State government makes all sorts of data available on the Open NY Data website, for the month of May 2022, the following information was available about the SNAP program:
- 2,873,666 New Yorkers received Food Stamps that month,
- $759,119,471 was spent on Food Stamp benefits for those New Yorkers,
- and this represents an increase of approximately 0.1% from April 2022 and just over a 2% increase when compared to May 2021.