SNAP overhaul impacts older adults and single parents

New requirements will make it more difficult for vulnerable households, particularly older adults and single parents with teen children, to remain eligible for food assistance benefits.

The One Big Beautiful Bill’s restructuring of SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, was analyzed in a paper by researchers from the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, part of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, published in Applied Economics Education & Extension on May 6. Age and work requirements have tightened, and a portion of SNAP funding will gradually shift to state budgets over the next year, presenting new challenges for recipients, administrators, local food pantries and retailers.

Under the updated policy, which went into effect on March 1, 2026, able-bodied adults aged 55 to 64 without dependents and parents whose youngest child is between 14 and 17 will need to prove they work, volunteer or receive approved education for at least 80 hours a month. Veterans, young adults aging out of foster care and unhoused people are also impacted by the new requirements but were not demarcated in the database used for the study.

The team found that roughly 1.6 million SNAP households must newly document 80 hours of work or training each month or lose benefits after three months in a three-year period.

“Adults in their late 50s and early 60s are precisely those least likely to find stable work quickly, given declining health, caregiving demands and age discrimination in hiring,” said Wendong Zhang, associate professor of applied economics and policy in the Dyson School. “Even those who do find work must verify their hours month by month, and the irregular schedules common in retail and caregiving jobs make that documentation genuinely difficult.”

New work requirements may also place additional strain on parents of teenagers above age 14, who already spend a significant amount of time on childcare. If cooking meals from scratch is too time consuming, then parents may rely on prepared foods instead, which decreases the purchasing power of their SNAP benefits.

“When you have work requirements and also have to prepare food, there’s an opportunity cost of missing out on, let’s say, your kid’s high school sporting event,” said Alan Hinds, a Ph.D. candidate in the Dyson School. “Opportunity cost is something that deserves more attention when we consider food programs as a whole. When we’re trying to find the most beneficial way to support people, we need to calculate it or we’re not truly measuring impact.”

Over the next year, SNAP is expected to shift a percentage of administrative and benefit costs to states. States previously handled 50% of administrative costs and will now be responsible for 75%. The percentage of benefit costs covered by each state — either 0%, 5%, 10% or 15% — was calculated based on their historical administrative error rate.

“States with historically high error rates usually serve more people with diverse and complicated cases,” said Zixia Huang, a Ph.D. student in the Dyson School. “One reason they may have a higher error rate is that they don’t have enough capacity to fully support the certification process. I see this like a vicious cycle: The states that actually need more investment tend to be the states that are punished more.”

People who lose their benefits will likely turn to local food pantries to close the gap, increasing pressure on non-governmental charities. Small or specialty grocers in low-income areas may also be impacted if a large percentage of their clients are unable to spend SNAP benefits in their stores.

“SNAP accounts for roughly 12 percent of grocery sales nationwide — up to 60 percent for some small and rural stores — and one estimate suggests more than 27,000 retailers could be harmed,” Zhang said. “If those stores close, food access worsens for entire communities, including families who never received SNAP. This issue is especially acute when we face elevated inflation from butter to gas.”

The research team also recommended that the Thrifty Food Plan, a U.S. Department of Agriculture tool providing cost-effective nutritional guidance to families, be reevaluated on a regular basis to reflect the rising cost of food staples.

“There’s a lot of nuance to the process that isn’t easily understood, so it’s important to understand there are a lot of different documents required to prove that you are in fact eligible for the program. It’s a very rigorous process,” Hinds said. “For those curious about SNAP benefits, I’d recommend they really look at what requirements are in their state and learn about the impacts of policies. Because it might sound like a great idea to pass on the burden of administrative costs to states, but there are a lot of ripple effects.”