The article attributes the rise in food stamp use primarily to the economy, but also notes that there has been some loosening of eligibility restrictions. I can tell you that the eligibility restrictions are very rigorous.
I recently had a student come to me in distress because she found out she was ineligible for food stamps, despite having no assets, because of her student status.
I've had former students (since graduated) with children who really needed the stamps, but were deemed ineligible because they had some limited retirement assets.
I think growing dependence on food stamps dramatizes quite clearly the poor economic conditions facing too many Americans:
Paletta, D. & Porter, C. (2013, March 28). Use of Food
Stamps Swells Even as Economy Improves. The Wall Street Journal, A1, A12.
[Excerpted] Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program, as the modern-day food-stamp benefit is known, has soared
70% since 2008 to a record 47.8 million as of December 2012… The biggest factor
behind the upward march of food stamps is a sluggish job market and a rising
poverty rate… [end]
Majia here: Rising reliance on food stamps is a symptom of
the underlying collapse of the middle-class in America I’ve been
chronicling since I began this blog several
years ago.
I reported earlier this week on a recent research paper that
argues that technology has essentially been used to ‘de-skill’ knowledge
workers, thereby eliminating the need for many ‘managerial’ level workers. Globalization and automation have today 'hollowed' out the workforce.
What we have left is a part-time, ‘low-skilled’ workforce
with low wages and benefits and a shrinking pool of well-paid and compensated
(albeit often overworked) professional class of workers. See the discussion here
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