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How is the $36 per American for SNAP/food stamps calculated and which year does it reference?
Executive Summary
The claim that SNAP/food-stamp benefits rose by $36 per American refers not to every U.S. resident but to an average monthly increase of about $36 per SNAP participant tied to the USDA’s 2021 update of the Thrifty Food Plan, implemented October 1, 2021. Multiple contemporaneous government and reporting analyses confirm the $36 figure as the average monthly boost resulting from a permanent recalculation of the benefit formula, while later budget and caseload data show overall program spending and per-participant averages changed in subsequent years [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Why $36 Became the Headline — A Policy Fix That Looks Simple but Isn’t
The $36 figure emerged when the USDA recalculated the Thrifty Food Plan in 2021 and raised benefit levels by roughly 25 percent, which the department quantified as an average monthly increase of about $36 per SNAP recipient starting October 1, 2021. That revision was the result of a congressionally directed re-evaluation in the 2018 Farm Bill that updated food price and consumption data to reflect modern nutrition guidance and actual purchasing patterns; the USDA presented the adjustment as a way to better align benefits with current food costs and dietary recommendations [1] [2]. The $36 therefore is a per-recipient monthly average tied to the 2021 policy change, not a per-capita cost across the entire U.S. population or a per-taxpayer figure. Reporting that omits this context makes the number appear larger in relation to the general public than the underlying policy warrants.
2. How the Number Is Calculated — From Thrifty Food Plan to Average Benefit Change
The $36 calculation follows the Thrifty Food Plan update: researchers revised the food plan basket, applied contemporary prices and consumption patterns, and then translated that change into benefit allotments. The USDA’s announcement framed the result as an average increase of $36 per month for the roughly 42 million recipients at the time, producing an estimate of added program cost of about $20 billion annually when the change took effect [2]. The figure is therefore an average across participants, derived from differences between pre-2021 benefit levels and the recalibrated benefits under the updated plan. It is not a snapshot of actual total annual federal outlays or of per-person yearly spending for the entire U.S. population; those larger aggregates are reported separately by budget and program data [3] [4].
3. Why Some Reports Look Like They Contradict the $36 Claim
Subsequent reporting and data releases focused on total SNAP outlays, average monthly benefits, and caseload shifts, which can cause apparent contradictions when compared to the $36 metric. For example, fiscal-year spending was reported at roughly $100.3 billion in FY2024 with an average monthly benefit near $187–$188 per participant and about 41.7 million participants, numbers that reflect ongoing program dynamics rather than the one-time average increase figure from 2021 [3] [5]. Other analyses calculate daily or annualized person-level figures — such as about $6 per person per day or different annual per-capita impressions — which stem from different denominators (daily benefit vs. monthly average vs. whole-population per-capita math) and different years’ data [6] [4]. Those are consistent but distinct metrics, not direct refutations of the $36 monthly average increase.
4. What Year Does the $36 Reference — It’s Grounded in 2021
The $36 reference is anchored to 2021, when the USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan revision took effect on October 1, 2021. Sources that explain the policy change describe the $36 as the average monthly uplift that beneficiaries would see under the new standard; reporters and analysts repeated that figure in coverage of the 2021 policy shift [1] [2]. Later years’ spending figures and average benefits reflect evolving caseloads, emergency allotments during the pandemic, and subsequent budgetary trends through 2023–2024, but they do not change the origin of the $36 metric. Treating the $36 as a current per-capita taxpayer cost conflates the policy-era per-recipient increase [7] with later aggregate expenditure data [3] [4].
5. Bigger Picture — What’s Left Out When People Quote $36 Without Context
Quoting $36 without noting that it is an average monthly increase per SNAP participant from 2021 obscures several important points: the difference between recipient-level averages and whole-population per-capita costs, the role of emergency supplemental benefits during the pandemic that temporarily raised outlays and benefits, and the fact that subsequent fiscal-year totals and daily benefit calculations use different bases and produce different per-person impressions [3] [5] [4]. Policy debates often deploy the $36 headline to argue costs or savings, but rigorous comparison requires matching the same denominator, timeframe, and policy conditions. Analyses that compare program totals in 2023–2024 to the 2021 per-recipient increase without aligning those variables risk misleading conclusions [8] [4].