Food stamps were created on May 16, 1939, when Mabel McFiggin of Rochester, New York became the first person to receive benefits under a new U.S. Department of Agriculture program.1Food and Nutrition Service. A Short History of SNAP That first program ran for less than four years and closed in the spring of 1943. The permanent program most people think of today was established a generation later, by the Food Stamp Act of 1964, and was renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 2008.
The 1939 Program
The original program was designed to solve two Depression-era problems simultaneously: farmers had surplus crops they could not sell, and millions of families could not afford to eat. Milo Perkins, the program’s first administrator, built a two-coupon system to connect them. Participants on public relief bought orange stamps at face value, which could be spent on any food. For every dollar of orange stamps purchased, the government added fifty cents’ worth of free blue stamps, redeemable only for foods the Department of Agriculture had declared surplus.1Food and Nutrition Service. A Short History of SNAP
The surplus list shifted from month to month, but the items participants most often bought with blue stamps included dry beans, flour, corn meal, eggs, butter, fresh vegetables, and apples. The program eventually operated in nearly half the counties in the United States and reached roughly 20 million people before it ended.1Food and Nutrition Service. A Short History of SNAP Wartime employment absorbed the unemployed and wiped out the crop surpluses, and with both original justifications gone, the program was shut down in 1943.
The Gap Years and Kennedy’s Pilots
Eighteen years passed before the federal government tried again. On February 2, 1961, President Kennedy signed his first executive order, which launched a pilot food stamp program in economically distressed areas. The first pilot opened in McDowell County, West Virginia, in the Appalachian coalfields. Several more test sites followed over the next three years, and their results gave Congress the evidence it needed to write a permanent law.
The Food Stamp Act of 1964
Congress passed the Food Stamp Act of 1964, and it was signed as Public Law 88-525 on August 31, 1964. This is the law that made food assistance a permanent federal program instead of a temporary experiment.2GovInfo. Public Law 88-525 – The Food Stamp Act of 1964 It divided responsibilities the same way the program still divides them: state agencies handled certification of applicants and distribution of benefits, while the federal government paid for the benefits themselves and authorized the retailers where stamps could be spent.1Food and Nutrition Service. A Short History of SNAP
One feature defined the 1964 version more than any other: the purchase requirement. Families had to pay a portion of their own income up front in order to receive a larger allotment of food stamps. The theory was that participants would keep spending what they normally spent on food and get a boost on top. In practice, the up-front cash payment kept the poorest families out of the program entirely, because they could not scrape together the buy-in.2GovInfo. Public Law 88-525 – The Food Stamp Act of 1964 The 1964 law also barred stamps from being used on alcohol, tobacco, and imported foods.
The 1977 Reform
By the mid-1970s, the purchase requirement had become the central target of reform. Advocates and legislators organized around a short slogan, “EPR,” meaning eliminate the purchase requirement. They won it in the Food Stamp Act of 1977, enacted as Title XIII of Public Law 95-113. Families no longer had to pay cash up front to receive stamps. That change took effect on January 1, 1979, and participation surged almost immediately.1Food and Nutrition Service. A Short History of SNAP
The 1977 law also set national income-eligibility standards. Households without an elderly or disabled member became ineligible if their gross income exceeded the poverty line by more than 30 percent, establishing the 130-percent threshold that still governs the program today.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 7 USC 2014 – Eligible Households The act introduced a standard deduction for all households and additional deductions for shelter costs and dependent care, making the benefit calculation more responsive to what families actually spent on necessities.
Electronic Benefits and the SNAP Name
Paper coupons did not disappear overnight. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 required every state to have an Electronic Benefit Transfer system in place by October 1, 2002, which ended the era of physical stamps.1Food and Nutrition Service. A Short History of SNAP EBT cards work like debit cards at checkout.
The name change came later. The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, commonly called the Farm Bill, renamed the program the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and renamed the underlying statute the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008.4GovInfo. Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 The new name signaled a shift in emphasis from preventing hunger to improving overall nutrition.
What “Food Stamps” Means Today
People still say “food stamps,” but the paper coupons that gave the program its name have been gone since 2002, and the program’s legal name has been SNAP since 2008. Benefits are loaded electronically onto a household’s EBT account each month, and state agencies handle the day-to-day administration under federal rules. Roughly 42 million Americans receive SNAP benefits each month, which makes it one of the largest anti-poverty programs in the country. The core structure, however, is recognizable from the laws described above: federal funding and retailer authorization, state-level eligibility work, an income screen anchored at 130 percent of the poverty line, and a list of prohibited purchases that still begins with alcohol and tobacco.