Approximately one in four college students face food insecurity, which is associated with negative health and academic outcomes. As the largest public nutritional program in the United States, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one important resource that states and colleges can use to support low-income college students. Yet SNAP eligibility rules for college students are complex, and only a small proportion of eligible students participate.
The aim of this report is to inform decisionmakers at the federal, state, and local levels who are considering efforts to expand SNAP participation among college students. The authors used statewide administrative data from Colorado to examine historical trends in SNAP participation among college students and then estimated how four different approaches might expand SNAP participation. They found that efforts to broaden student eligibility—either through federal changes to student eligibility rules or state agencies’ use of their authorities to interpret student eligibility rules—would increase SNAP participation by a larger amount than such efforts as statewide outreach or college-level case management support that leave student eligibility rules unchanged.
The authors provide additional methodological details and results for their analyses in a technical annex.
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