Food Stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has endured and expanded in recent years. The program has been preserved and in some cases enhanced as a result of its inclusion in the Farm Bill, being characterized as a safety net of last resort and as a program for the deserving poor.

Food Stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has endured and expanded in recent years. The program has been preserved and in some cases enhanced as a result of its inclusion in the Farm Bill, being characterized as a safety net of last resort and as a program for the deserving poor.

For many Americans who live at or below the poverty threshold, access to healthy foods at a reasonable price is a challenge that often places a strain on already limited resources and may compel them to make food choices that are contrary to current nutritional guidance. To help alleviate this problem, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers a number of nutrition assistance programs designed to improve access to healthy foods for low-income individuals and households. The largest of these programs is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly called the Food Stamp Program, which today serves more than 46 million Americans with a program cost in excess of $75 billion annually. The goals of SNAP include raising the level of nutrition among low-income households and maintaining adequate levels of nutrition by increasing the food purchasing power of low-income families. In response to questions about whether there are different ways to define the adequacy of SNAP allotments consistent with the program goals of improving food security and access to a healthy diet, USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to conduct a study to examine the feasibility of defining the adequacy of SNAP allotments, specifically: the feasibility of establishing an objective, evidence-based, science-driven definition of the adequacy of SNAP allotments consistent with the program goals of improving food security and access to a healthy diet, as well as other relevant dimensions of adequacy; and data and analyses needed to support an evidence-based assessment of the adequacy of SNAP allotments. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Examining the Evidence to Define Benefit Adequacy reviews the current evidence, including the peer-reviewed published literature and peer-reviewed government reports. Although not given equal weight with peer-reviewed publications, some non-peer-reviewed publications from nongovernmental organizations and stakeholder groups also were considered because they provided additional insight into the behavioral aspects of participation in nutrition assistance programs. In addition to its evidence review, the committee held a data gathering workshop that tapped a range of expertise relevant to its task.

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.

As budgetary concerns have come to dominate Congressional action, the design and implementation of welfare programs have come under greater scrutiny. This book focuses on the food stamp program to examine how the growing integration of welfare and budgeting has affected both politics and people. Applying insightful analysis to this important policy topic, Ronald F. King looks at the effects on welfare transfers of the kinds of budgetary rules adopted by Congress: discretion, entitlement, and expenditure caps. King uses models based on these forms to interpret the events in the history of the food stamp program up to the welfare reform of 1996, and he shows how these different budget rules have affected political strategies among key actors and policy outcomes. King analyzes tensions in the program between budgetary concerns and entitlement, revealing that budget mechanisms which seek to cap the growth of entitlement spending have perverse but predictable effects. He also explores the broader conflict between procedural and substantive justice, which pits inclusive democratic decision-making against special protections for the needy and vulnerable in society. The food stamp program offers a valuable opportunity for studying the influence of shifting institutional factors. In an era when budgetary anxieties coexist with continuing poverty, King's book sheds new light on the increasing fiscalization of welfare in America.

Food Stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has endured and expanded in recent years. The program has been preserved and in some cases enhanced as a result of its inclusion in the Farm Bill, being characterized as a safety net of last resort and as a program for the deserving poor.

Immigration across the US-Mexican border may currently be a hot topic, but it is hardly a new one. Labor issues and civil rights have been interwoven with the history of the region since at least the time of the Mexican-American War, and the twentieth century witnessed recurrent political battles surrounding the status and rights of Mexican immigrants. In Mexican Inclusion: The Origins of Anti-Discrimination Policy in Texas and the Southwest, political scientist Matthew Gritter traces the process by which people of Mexican origin were incorporated in the United States’ first civil rights agency, the World War II–era President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practices (FEPC). Incorporating the analytic lenses of transnationalism, institutional development, and identity formation, Gritter explores the activities and impact of the FEPC. He argues that transnational and international networks related to the US’s Good Neighbor Policy created an impetus for the federal government to combat discrimination against people of Mexican origin. The inclusion of Mexican American civil rights leaders as FEPC staff members combined with an increase in state capacity to afford the agency increased institutional effectiveness. The FEPC provided an opportunity for small-scale state building and policy innovation.?Gritter compares the outcomes of the agency’s anti-discrimination efforts with class-based labor organizing. Grounded in pragmatic appeals to citizenship, Mexican American civil rights leaders utilized leverage provided by the Good Neighbor Policy to create their own distinct place in an emerging civil rights bureaucracy. Students and scholars of Mexican American issues, civil rights, and government policy will appreciate Mexican Inclusion for its fresh synthesis of analytic and historical processes. Likewise, those focused on immigration and borderlands studies will gain new insights from its inclusive context.