How did COVID-19 emergency allotments affect monthly SNAP costs between 2020 and 2023?

1. How the emergency allotments changed SNAP spending—and when they stopped being paid

Federal waivers authorized states to issue Emergency Allotments that topped SNAP benefits to the maximum for household size or by a fixed supplemental amount, significantly elevating monthly benefit outlays during 2020–2022; extensions and state-by-state rollbacks occurred through late 2022 and early 2023, with the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 terminating EAs issued after February 2023 and culminating in most states ceasing the supplements by March 2023 ^[1]. This phase-out shifted SNAP from pandemic-era elevated payments back to pre-EA benefit levels, and the timing of state opt-outs varied, producing staggered impacts on monthly program spending across jurisdictions ^{[2] [4]}.

2. Quantifying the per-beneficiary change: what studies measured

Quasi-experimental analyses using USDA administrative data and difference-in-differences designs report concrete dollar declines when EAs ended. One August 2024 study finds that among 18 states that opted out of EAs early, the average monthly SNAP benefit fell by $183 per beneficiary (95% CI: −$214 to −$152), with effects persistent over the subsequent year ^[2]. These reductions translated directly into lower monthly program costs for those states, while states that maintained EAs kept higher per-participant spending through early 2023. The dollar-range estimates therefore provide a clear estimate of the reduction in monthly recipient-level benefit costs attributable to EA cessation ^[2].

3. Human consequences tied to the spending shift—food insufficiency and hardship measures

Survey-based studies linking EA expirations to household outcomes document worsened food security and increased reliance on charitable food assistance. A Health Affairs analysis of the Household Pulse Survey reports that expiration in many places was associated with an 8.4 percentage-point rise in food insufficiency and a 2.1 point increase in food pantry use, plus elevated anxiety symptoms for some demographic groups, after benefits fell in 2023 ^[3]. A separate Preventive Medicine analysis similarly associates EA end with a 5.0 point increase in food insufficiency and 8.0 point rise in difficulty affording expenses among SNAP households; both reports frame these outcome changes as temporally linked to benefit reductions ^{[5] [3]}.

4. Heterogeneity across states and political drivers of early rollbacks

State-level heterogeneity mattered: some states voluntarily ended EAs earlier than others, and one study found that governors’ party affiliation was the primary predictor of opt-outs—17 of 18 early opt-out states had Republican governors—implying political considerations influenced when monthly SNAP costs declined locally ^[2]. Early opt-outs produced immediate, sustained enrollment and benefit declines in those states, reducing monthly program costs locally but correlating with worse measured hardship. Thus the fiscal savings in monthly SNAP outlays were concentrated where state executives chose to stop EAs early, and those policy choices had measurable distributional consequences ^[2].

5. Net program cost picture and policy responses after EA end

At the federal-program level, the nationwide wind-down of EAs reduced monthly SNAP expenditures relative to pandemic peaks; however, the discontinuation also precipitated intensified demand for emergency food assistance and prompted state-level legislative responses to partially replace lost benefits—examples include proposals or measures to establish state minimums to blunt cuts for the lowest-benefit households ^{[6] [7]}. The aggregate fiscal impact therefore involved both immediate reductions in federal SNAP outlays and offsetting pressures on other safety-net and charitable systems, with the balance depending on whether states enacted compensatory measures or left beneficiaries to absorb lower federally funded monthly benefits ^{[6] [7]}.