Tuesday, February 5, 2013

One Correction

In response to my first post, the challenge organizer, Rabbi Bonnie Margulis, emailed me about the budget for kids:

“Just one note of clarification - the $116.28 monthly allocation is per adult in the household.  If your family was actually applying for SNAP benefits, there are calculations you would go through based on family income, assets, number of people and ages of the people in your household, and then what your family's expected monthly contribution toward your food budget would be.  Basically, if you multiply the $116.28 times 4, or the weekly $29.07 times 4, you would get a good approximation of what your monthly or weekly SNAP benefit would be for the whole family.”

Therefore, to be accurate, I am adding the word “approximately” to the challenge description in the sidebar of this site.

In fact, I had wondered about the kids’ allowance when first considering the food stamp challenge: the guidelines said $29.07 per person without mentioning age. Even if the SNAP amount for kids would actually be lower, we reasoned that it could be balanced out by free school breakfasts and lunches as well as other benefits such as WIC, making $29.07 an acceptable approximation. 

4 comments:

  1. I was wondering about this. I assume a lot of people who receive food stamps do have income and make some contribution toward their own food expenses. Do you know if the amount you are working with is based on a family with no income?

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  2. You're right -- often they would be contributing toward their own expenses. Here are the federal guidelines (states have slight variations).
    http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/applicant_recipients/eligibility.htm
    According to that, people are expected to contribute 30% of their income toward food.

    For purposes of the challenge, perhaps we can consider that the additional hurdle of eating only on the food stamp budget compensates for the nonmonetary factors that might make it easier for me: easy transportation to the store, a well-stocked kitchen with all the necessary utensils and equipment, access to cookbooks, prior knowledge of basic cooking techniques, time to plan meals and prepare food from scratch, and so on.

    Thanks for reading!

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    Replies
    1. p.s. To answer the original question, I don't know exactly how the amount for the challenge was calculated.

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    2. Update: Yesterday I received further information about the challenge amount: "How did [Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice] decide on the amount that could be spent? The Food Research and Action Council website has information on state-by-state demographics on federal food programs (http://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wi.pdf). The information on Wisconsin shows that the average monthly allocation in 2011 for an adult is $116.28, which comes to $29.07/week."

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