Why SNAP Works: A Political History—and Defense—of the Food Stamp Program

by Christopher John Bosso

The first book to tell the whole story of SNAP and to explain why all Americans should support it.   The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is the nation’s largest government effort for helping low-income Americans obtain an adequate diet. How did SNAP, formerly the food stamp program, evolve from a Depression-era effort to use up surplus goods into America’s foundational food assistance program? And how does SNAP survive? Incisive and original, Why SNAP Works is the first book to provide a comprehensive history and evaluation of the nation’s most important food insecurity and poverty alleviation effort.   Everyone has an opinion about SNAP, not all of them positive, but its benefits are felt broadly and across party lines. Christopher Bosso makes a clear, nuanced, and impassioned case for protecting this unique food program, exploring its history and breaking down the facts for readers across the political spectrum. Why SNAP Works is an essential book for anyone concerned about food access, poverty, and the “welfare system” in the United States.

358 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 10, 2023

Reviews

[Abe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good rough and ready history of SNAP. It wasn’t necessarily lacking in detail but I think it could’ve been longer I think the narrative could’ve been dramatized a bit more (though maybe it’s a bit too dry for all that). The tone shift towards the end is a bit too abrupt as well I sympathetic to the idea that the modern welfare state is limited often the product of cynical political considerations and bargaining but nonetheless worth defending but I still feel as though the sharp transition from neutral historical telling to out and out defense felt awkward. Also more could’ve been spent addressing the usual “fraud” or “prone to fraud” allegations which are often leveled at these programs. I enjoy a good empirical policy analysis so I felt as though I would’ve enjoyed a more thorough discussion of the literature in general but this issue especially felt a bit underdiscussed (although my bias is shaped by the rather awful recent events with DOGE which I will say this book couldn’t have anticipated but did somehow cleverly did in a way with its reference to Reagan’s speeches making use of similar language). Would definitely keep on my shelf a a good reference.

[Nate Golden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bosso takes you through a pretty interesting political history of food stamps / SNAP and concludes with an argument that SNAP is at the center of optimal policy and possible politics.

He’s probably correct about that for modern America but I still see the work as eliminating the entire narrative around a “deserving and undeserving poor.”

All humans are deserving of a full healthy diet.

[lauren]

As Bosso notes, SNAP’s endurance has depended less on moral consensus about hunger and more on political bargains and economic utility. While the program is effective in reducing food insecurity and stimulating local economies, it is also burdened with layers of conditionality that reflect deeply ingrained assumptions about who deserves support. Having dedicated 2-3 years to reading through every state's SNAP guidelines and reform proposals at this point, what continues to strike me is how compassion is wielded as a tool that reinforces the most rigid constructs of class. There's a really interesting paper by Michael Kraus about how compassion, as an action or quality that cannot seem to transcend the dimensions of class, does not intermingle with those outgroup members deemed ‘undeserving’ of it.

The tendencies of those with the most generational wealth and power to only save compassion for those they see themselves in, for those viewed as equals (or with the potential to be equals), manifests as a system that barricades health care, education, and overall opportunity from those who have faced the most historical stigmatization, disenfranchisement, discrimination, abuse, and neglect. Even when social support programs are designed, they hold these prejudices in their language. SNAP exists and will provide you with nutritional support, but only if you are this poor, work that many hours, possess these few assets, have those specific legal statuses, and maintain that degree of compliance with systems that often caused your marginalization in the first place. Only if you’re deemed worthy or redeemable in the uncompassionate eyes of those who made the system and put you in it. Programs like SNAP and TANF -- and the endorsement of their most problematic policy levers -- reveal the hidden injuries of class and the systemic biases that shape the relative accessibility of a healthy life in the US.

Bosso writes that SNAP has long been a target of ideological crusades often justified by myths of dependency or fraud -- narratives that stigmatize recipients and distract from the program’s proven benefits. Just look at any headline about the program in the last few months as the federal government looks to strip it down to its very worst bones. Beyond those ideological attacks lies a deeper issue: the design of SNAP itself, while politically resilient, still encodes the belief that public assistance must be earned through suffering or scarcity. As with many state-administered but federally-coded programs, the pandemic briefly disrupted this script. Under such emergent circumstances, benefits expanded and barriers lowered -- but the swift rollback of those changes shows just how lacking we are when it comes to imagining something better. In the United States, social programs do not reflect compassion; they perform it -- fleetingly, conditionally, unconvincingly, and always in ways that uphold the very structures they claim to address.

this is me fleshing out my thesis i hope snap lives and that future iterations may be designed with the input of those who have used the program. because god forbid we ever design a social support program the first time around with any semblance of community-informed policy. BBCE is a promising start and i hope it makes it through the next 4 years