SNAP Benefits Cliff: When More Money Can Leave Families Worse Off

Working families receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits can lose more in food assistance than they gain from a raise or extra hours if their earnings cross an eligibility limit, cutting off benefits worth more than the additional pay and leaving them with less money to feed their children.

The problem is known as a "benefits cliff": a point at which an increase in earnings triggers a reduction or loss of public assistance that is larger than the additional income a household has gained. Federal researchers, academics and organizations working with low-income families have documented how the possibility of crossing those thresholds can complicate decisions about taking extra hours, accepting raises or moving into better-paying jobs. In some cases, families cross the threshold and find they have lost a significant portion of their income, even though their pay has risen.

SNAP benefits are paid to low- and no-income households across the U.S. For more than 35 million people across all 50 states and U.S. territories, they help put food on the table with monthly payments uploaded to a prepaid benefits card, which can be used in participating grocery stores.

Alicia Freemont, a 29-year-old mother in Nebraska, has experienced the plight of the benefits cliff. She told Newsweek that she lost $150 monthly SNAP benefits in early 2024 after being informed that her income was less than $20 above the eligibility limit for her household. At the time, she was a single mother working full time.

"I was $19 over, and that was so hard," she said.

Her difficulties did not end when she dropped off SNAP. More than two years later, after an injury reduced her work hours, Alicia applied for assistance again, which was denied. Her household is now relying partly on credit cards while she works part time and attends medical appointments, trying to find a way to keep her and her family financially afloat.

Benefits cliffs can occur across means-tested programs, like SNAP, when eligibility or assistance changes as household income rises. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defines a benefits cliff as a situation in which a reduction in benefits is equal to or larger than the increase in earnings that caused it. That can mean a worker receives a raise or works additional hours but sees little improvement, or even a decline, in their household’s overall finances.

Stephanie Gonzalez Guittar, an associate professor of sociology at Rollins College whose research interests include housing and food insecurity, told Newsweek that relatively small increases in earnings may not significantly change a family’s ability to meet its expenses.

"Small income increases may not be substantial enough to change one’s quality of life based on current costs of living," Gonzalez Guittar said.

For Alicia, that point came around the beginning of 2024. She said she had completed her usual SNAP recertification in December 2023 and learned the following month that she no longer qualified. She was $19 above the income threshold. But in earning that extra $19, she lost $150 a month in SNAP benefits.

"That actually took a big chunk off my back," she said of the benefit.

"I was scared because at that point I was a single mom, and I was already trying my best to keep my eight-year-old’s head above water," she said. "I didn't really care for myself, and I worked almost around the clock."

At the time, Alicia was a manager at a local grocery store. She said losing SNAP prompted her to seek extra shifts to replace the missing SNAP money, working as much as 18 hours in a single day just to get by. She relied on her grandmother to help care for her son.

Later, she suffered a serious car accident which forced her out of work for several months. Alicia said she tried to get assistance again, but ultimately lost her home and was forced to move in with her grandmother.

Her circumstances have since changed, though her financial troubles are still far from solved. Alicia is now married and lives in a household with three children. But after another injury in 2026 left her working part time, Alicia's family again began struggling with bills and turned to credit cards. She reapplied for SNAP after the injury. She was denied again.

Alicia is far from alone in her predicament. Research has for years linked the loss of SNAP benefits with increased food hardship, even if they had improved their working income.

A 2019 Health Affairs study of working families with young children found that those whose SNAP benefits were cut off after their earnings rose had higher odds of household and child food insecurity than families whose benefits remained consistent. They also had higher odds of energy insecurity and sacrificing health care because of costs.

A separate 2021 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that former SNAP recipients whose benefits had been cut off within the previous year had more than twice the odds of severe household and adult food insecurity compared with current recipients, as well as 80 percent higher odds of low food security among children.

Stephen Grimaldi, executive director of New York Common Pantry, told Newsweek that households near an eligibility threshold often remain under essentially the same financial pressure after crossing it.

"Families can be just a few dollars or a small amount of income above a threshold and still be facing the same rent, grocery prices, transportation costs and childcare expenses," he said. "From the family's perspective, crossing an eligibility line doesn't necessarily mean they suddenly have financial security."

"The important thing to recognize is that eligibility thresholds are an administrative way of drawing a line, but people's financial circumstances don't change substantially or meaningfully when they cross that line."

Grimaldi said the possibility of losing assistance can easily be part of considering whether to accept extra work.

"People want to work and increase their earnings, but they also have to look at what happens to their household's overall financial situation," he said. "A $1 increase in wages doesn't necessarily feel like a $1 increase if it comes with the loss of other supports that help pay for food, childcare, health care, or housing."

A 2024 HHS study surveyed 1,804 current and former recipients of SNAP, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and childcare subsidies. Participants were presented with hypothetical scenarios involving higher-paying jobs. Researchers found that benefit loss made respondents less likely to recommend accepting the higher-paying opportunity. Smaller benefit losses and larger net financial gains, meanwhile, increased willingness to take higher-paying work.

In 2025, a survey conducted by researchers at the Washington University in St. Louis Center for Social Development Research found that more than one in five workers receiving some form of public benefit had taken actions including turning down additional hours or refusing job offers or promotions to avoid falling prey to a benefits cliff that would worsen their financial situation.

SNAP benefits taper as income increases. The program calculates benefits partly on net income and includes a 20 percent deduction for earned income. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank, benefits can decline by roughly 24 to 36 cents for each additional dollar of earnings. That means, for most recipients, earning an additional dollar does not cost them a dollar in SNAP.

But the gradual phaseout exists alongside income eligibility limits. Under the ordinary federal gross-income test, the threshold is generally 130 percent of the federal poverty level. A family whose earnings move beyond that limit can therefore become ineligible even if, based on its housing, childcare or other deductible expenses, it would otherwise still qualify for a significant benefit.

States can soften that cliff through a policy known as Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility, or BBCE. The policy allows states to raise SNAP's gross-income ceiling above the ordinary federal threshold. CBPP says the approach helps working families remain eligible as their earnings rise and can "minimize benefit cliffs."

Nebraska, where Freemont lives, already does this. State law sets the expanded gross-income threshold at 165 percent of the federal poverty level. CBPP estimates that around 8,000 Nebraskans received SNAP in 2023 because of the state's higher income limit, including roughly 7,000 people living in households with children.

In other words, Nebraska has moved the cliff further up the income ladder for many families. It has not eliminated the point at which eligibility eventually ends.

SNAP's normal benefit formula is designed to reduce assistance gradually as a household becomes better able to pay for food itself, but a hard eligibility boundary still has to be crossed eventually. Grimaldi said a more gradual transition could reduce the disruption.

"When benefits decrease incrementally as earnings rise, families have a clearer financial incentive to work more and earn more without facing a sudden loss of support," he said.

For Alicia, the question is less theoretical: even two years on from losing her SNAP benefits, she and her family are still stuck between a rock and a hard place without SNAP to help shore things up.

"I'll skip a meal because, if we have leftovers, I'd rather it go to the boys," she said. "Or if there's more of something, it's going to the boys."

"At first it was devastating. Even now, it’s still kind of devastating," Alicia said. "Like I wish I could really qualify for this because then we’re not struggling, or we can catch up on bills with our credit cards we just pulled out to make sure our bills are paid."

"Sometimes, my heart gets a little heavy, a little lump in my throat, because it shouldn't feel this hard."