Most Ohio SNAP exemptions go to white families

An analysis of CLEVELAND — food stamp use in Ohio found that counties exempted from work rules had overwhelmingly white populations while urban areas such as Cleveland and Akron, where black poverty far outpaces the state’s average, faced more stringent rules.

Ninety-seven percent of the families in Ohio counties that are exempt from work requirements attached to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are white, the analysis found.

Meanwhile, only one of the state’s major urban centers, Youngstown, is in a county that qualifies for the work exemption.

“The exemption being implemented at the county level kind of ignores those urban areas,” said Adam White, a policy and planning assistant for the Center for Community Solutions who authored the report.

Those cities “flat out are not going to be eligible for the exemptions,” White said Friday in an interview with cleveland.com. “We see it as an equity issue.”

The issue is relevant now, White said, because the state is considering seeking similar work requirements for Medicaid coverage, using the same criteria that it has used with SNAP to hand out exemptions.

What was the study?

The study was an effort to gauge the relationship between poverty statistics from Ohio and SNAP enrollment across racial and ethnic groups.

Families are eligible for food stamps if the household income is no greater than 130 percent of the federal poverty level for gross income.

A work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents was waived nationally in 2008 following the recession but reinstated in 2014. States were permitted to waive that requirement for jurisdictions where unemployment rates were higher than 120 percent of the national average over two years.

Gov. John Kasich’s administration granted those waivers at the county level in 2014 for 16 counties, nearly all of which are in Southeast Ohio. Another 10, most in southern and southwestern Ohio, were added in 2017.

The study, using data from the American Community Survey covering 2012 to 2016, compared the poverty statistics and SNAP usage in exempt counties with the rest of the state.

What did study find?

Every Ohio household receiving SNAP benefits is either in poverty or near the poverty level.

White families account for most of the households living below poverty (65.3 percent) and receiving SNAP benefits (65.7 percent).

That should be expected given the state’s white population accounts for 85 percent of all households.

Black households, while accounting for a smaller part of the total households, are overrepresented.

Black residents account for 11 percent of Ohio’s households, but more than 28 percent of the black households are in poverty and 29 percent of those are getting SNAP benefits.