SNAP Spending Rose and Fell With Pandemic-Era Changes to Benefit Amounts

USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides benefits for low-income households to buy groceries, is the Nation’s largest nutrition assistance program and USDA’s largest program by spending. In fiscal year (FY) 2023, 42.1 million people received SNAP benefits per month, on average, amounting to 12.6 percent of the U.S. resident population. Federal spending on SNAP totaled $112.8 billion in FY 2023, or 67.8 percent of total USDA domestic nutrition assistance spending that year.