Food Stamps Go Further in Rural Areas — Until You Add Transportation Costs

The gap between the cost of food and what SNAP benefits pay hits rural communities hard because of higher transportation costs.

by Sarah Melotte July 15, 2024 || The DAILY YONDER Keep it Rural

The lower cost of groceries in rural areas means that federal nutrition benefits cover a greater share of food expenses there, but higher transportation costs erode any advantage rural families may have in stretching their food dollars, new research shows.

The nonpartisan nonprofit Urban Institute found that the average cost of a modestly priced meal is about 5% lower in nonmetropolitan (or rural) areas than in metropolitan ones.

Benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) cover about 85% of the cost of that meal in nonmetropolitan counties, while the benefit covered an average of 81% of the cost of the meal in metropolitan counties, the research showed.

But SNAP benefits don’t go as far as people think in rural areas, according to a nutrition program advocate.

“The meal gap is profound throughout America, but rural America gets hit harder because the transportation cost to get the food is higher,” said Salaam Bhatti, the director of SNAP programs at the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

Nationally, SNAP covers an average of 84% of the total cost of a modestly priced meal.

The amount of SNAP benefits an individual receives is based on things like income and household size, not on other factors like transportation cost.

Lack of Transportation and Broadband Plague Food-Insecure Rural Americans

After Covid-era emergency allotments expired in February of 2023, low-income Americans continued to struggle with increasing food insecurity as federal benefit programs like SNAP slashed budgets and reinstated work requirements for recipients.

Data from the Economic Research Service (ERS) shows that rural people generally live farther from a supermarket compared to their urban counterparts. According to a 2010 ERS report (the most recent available), the median distance to a supermarket in rural areas was 3.2 miles, compared to 0.7 miles for urban residents.

Smaller populations in rural areas make operating a grocery store more difficult.  According to the most recent USDA data, 76 counties had no grocery store at all in 2016, and about 82% of those counties were rural.

In addition to transportation barriers, lack of access to high speed internet in rural counties can exacerbate the burden of providing food for low-income families by making it harder to sign up for government benefits.

A Daily Yonder analysis of broadband data found that residents of rural Zip codes sometimes paid up to $25 more per month than their urban and suburban neighbors.

“Low-income families are working multiple jobs and juggling kids,” Bhatti said. “[Transportation] eats up your car, your gas, but it also eats up your time.”

SNAP Coverage Varies by Economic Industry

Although meal costs are generally less expensive in rural areas, some rural counties are the exception to the rule. In rural counties where recreation and tourism drive the local economy, for example, SNAP only covers about 80% of the total cost of a meal. The average cost of a meal for a low-income family in rural recreation counties is $3.57, 10 cents higher than the average cost of a meal in urban areas.

That’s because recreation-dependent counties tend to have higher-than-average costs of living compared to other rural counties. In 2023, the average household income needed to support a family of four in rural recreation communities was $97,800, compared to $88,900 in other rural counties, according to a dataset compiled by the Economic Policy Institute.

The cost of a meal also varied across other economic types of counties in rural areas.

• In rural counties where government industries like federal prisons or public schools drive most of the economic activity, SNAP covered about 85% of the cost of a meal. (Average cost of a meal , $3.31 per person)

• In farming-dependent counties, SNAP covered about 86% of the total cost of a meal, on average. (Average cost, $3.27 per person).

• In rural counties where manufacturing was the predominant economic activity, SNAP covered about 88% of the total cost of a meal. (Average cost, $3.22 per person.)

• On average, SNAP covered 86% of the total cost of a meal in counties where mining and natural resource extraction was the primary driver of economic activity. (Average cost, $3.25 per person.)

• In rural counties where no particular industry dominated the local economy, SNAP covered about 87% of the total cost of a meal. (Average cost, $3.26 per person.)

The county economic types are based on categories created by the Economic Research Service (ERS), a branch of the USDA.