SNAP enrollment is declining rapidly in Ohio, and not just because of stricter work requirements
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is our nation’s most effective food assistance program. SNAP provides more nutrition assistance than charitable food networks, free school meals, childcare centers, after school programs, and senior centers combined.
According to Feeding America, for every one meal provided by food banks, SNAP provides nine.
Decades of research shows that SNAP is unequivocally the most effective and most efficient program America has to fight hunger.
Unfortunately, SNAP is now facing the biggest crisis in program history. The passage of H.R. 1 (also called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”) in July 2025 made major structural changes to SNAP, cutting more than $187 billion in federal funding from the program, and shifting program costs down to state and county governments. Since H.R. 1 implementation began, eligible people have been losing SNAP at alarming rates.
Those hardest hit are the 1.8 million Ohioans facing food insecurity—but Ohio’s economy will also pay a steep price.
SNAP enrollment decline in Ohio and nationwide
Since July 2025, SNAP enrollment has declined by more than 10 percent nationwide, with 4.5 million people (and counting) losing access to nutrition assistance, including more than 1.5 million children. A recent NYTimes article and accompanying episode of The Daily podcast chronicled the experience of Arizona, where SNAP enrollment has declined by an astonishing 55 percent since H.R. 1 passed.
In Ohio, SNAP enrollment declined by 7.7 percent between July 2025 and May 2026, representing more than 107,000 Ohioans losing access to nutrition assistance.
The SNAP enrollment decline is even steeper—at 8.7 percent—for Ohio children. In fact, more than 50,000 children in Ohio have lost access to SNAP since H.R. 1 passed. Thirteen of Ohio’s 88 counties have seen SNAP enrollment among children decline by more than 10 percent in less than one year, including both urban and rural counties (see Figure A, below). By comparison, only two counties (Franklin and Clark) have SNAP enrollment declines among adults above 10 percent.
The considerable number of children losing SNAP benefits suggests that the imposition of work requirements for older adults and parents of teenagers is not the main driver of SNAP’s caseload decline. Neither is an improved economy, as the unemployment rate in Ohio has remained steady during this time, with a 4.5 percent unemployment rate in both July 2025 and May 2026.
Overall, 82 of Ohio’s 88 counties saw SNAP participation among children decline between July 2025 and May 2026.
Ripple effects of SNAP enrollment decline among children
With so many Ohio children losing access to nutrition assistance through SNAP, ripple effects will affect broader community nutrition programs, including the National School Lunch Program. As the new school year gets underway, fewer schools will be able to provide free school meals to all students. Why? Because “community eligibility” for free school meals is largely based on the percentage of enrolled children who receive SNAP and/or Medicaid benefits. As enrollment declines, entire school districts will lose community eligibility - a trend that is already happening across the country.
During the 2025-2026 school year, 1,766 Ohio schools participated in community eligibility to provide free school meals to all 733,611 students enrolled in these schools. For the 2026-2027 school year (and beyond), the number of participating schools is expected to drop significantly, especially in more rural school districts where large drops in SNAP participation among children have occurred.
Ripple effects of SNAP’s enrollment decline among both children and adults in Ohio are also being felt by grocery stores. With over 100,000 fewer Ohioans enrolled in SNAP, Ohio has lost more than $21 million each month in grocery purchasing power. Combined with the economic impact that SNAP spending generates,
Ohio communities are missing out on more than $32 million in economic activity, at a time when the national economy is getting weaker, not stronger.
What is driving SNAP’s enrollment decline among children?
Since declining SNAP participation among children after H.R. 1 cannot be explained by stricter work requirements for adults, what can?
The primary answer—more paperwork.
The new law required states to make many changes to SNAP’s eligibility verification process. Some changes were direct, such as requiring SNAP households without an elderly or disabled member to re-verify their heating or cooling expenses, even if they received an energy assistance grant in the past year. Other changes were indirect, such as incentivizing states to collect more verification paperwork, and more often, to avoid potential errors in the SNAP benefits calculation. In addition, with states under financial pressure to reduce administrative spending, states like Ohio have moved away from efficient, but expensive, electronic income verification sources, resulting in more requests for paper verification.
Together, these changes resulted in much more paperwork for SNAP applicants and recipients to submit and for county caseworkers to process. Since July 2025, many households have struggled to follow these higher verification requirements, even though they remain eligible, resulting in the loss of SNAP benefits for the whole family.
The root cause of declining SNAP participation among Ohio’s children is the “SNAP cost shift” that Congress created in H.R.—what a SNAP administrator recently called an “existential threat” to the program in every state.
As I detailed in an earlier piece, Congressional lawmakers set up a hastily-designed new system to leverage an existing program integrity measure—called the payment error rate—to transfer federal spending obligations onto state budgets as a way to pay for other components of H.R. 1. By doing so, Congress put enormous pressure on state agencies to rapidly reduce their “payment error rates” to avoid major new financial obligations that many state budgets simply could not absorb.
What can Ohio lawmakers do?
The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way. We do not have to accept increased child hunger in Ohio as the price we all pay to comply with H.R. 1. Congress still has time to authorize a two-year delay in the SNAP cost shift to put all states on equal footing and ensure thoughtful reforms to lower payment error rates have time to take hold. Such a delay has bipartisan support, and has been endorsed by the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Counties, and more.
Passing such relief before October 1, 2026 - as part of a Congressional Farm Bill or another legislative vehicle that grants farm relief - is the single best way to stabilize our food economy at a time when child hunger is on the rise in every kind of community—urban, rural, and suburban alike.
End Notes:
A smaller factor contributing to the decline of SNAP enrollment among children in Ohio is the SNAP eligibility restriction for legally-present immigrant children, including refugees and asylees, required by H.R. 1. According to USDA data, approximately 1,000 children with a newly restricted immigration status received SNAP in Fiscal Year 2024. This represents approximately 2 percent of the Ohio children who have lost access to SNAP since H.R. 1 passed.
To see if your community school qualifies for free school meals through community eligibility during the 2026-2027 school year, check this list from the Ohio Department of Education and check with your school building to see what meal service they plan to offer this school year.
