Vox, June 5, 2019: Food stamps helped lift the US economy out of the Great Recession
Trump’s GOP allies on Capitol Hill have long shared his disdain for the safety net, pushing the tired narrative that welfare makes people lazy and is a drain on the US economy. That view is so entrenched that the Trump administration has used it as an excuse to make it harder for people to qualify for help.
Yet new research from the US government discredits that narrative.
Economists at the US Department of Agriculture found that government spending on food stamps has been pretty effective in stimulating the economy since the start of the Great Recession. And more specifically, it has been most effective in helping rural America, the kinds of places where voters overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2016 election.
Researchers found that every $22,000 in tax dollars spent on food stamps between 2001 to 2014 created about one job. Grocery subsidies, which families usually spend right away, immediately pumped money into rural supermarkets and small businesses (and their employees) at a time when jobs were scarce.
