SNAP Cuts Could Lead To 70,000 Avoidable Deaths

The Big “Beautiful” Bill passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump last July imposes barriers and restrictions to Americans’ access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), producing the largest cuts in SNAP history. Enrollment will likely fall in the months ahead as more families who are currently receiving or would have been eligible for benefits see those benefits reduced or cut entirely. Meanwhile, the law’s expanded administrative state cost shift goes into effect in October, and the new benefit cost shift takes effect in fiscal year 2028, creating additional barriers to access.

States are already facing tough budgetary decisions as these provisions do real harm to people in need. For example, Arizona was forced to cut hundreds of SNAP administrative staff, creating a substantial backlog of applications. States that are unable to pay for the increased expenses may leave SNAP altogether.

These cuts will have deadly consequences. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects a 2.4-million-person reduction in average monthly SNAP participation as a result of expanded work requirements. The Center for American Progress projects that would translate into nearly 70,000 avoidable deaths nationally by 2040—based on updates to estimates from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University. States that withdraw from SNAP because of the cuts would suffer even greater losses.

To give states more time to prepare for increased costs and work to lower their benefit shares, Congress should at least delay the administrative and benefit costs shift—if not reverse all $187 billion worth of cuts to SNAP to minimize the harm done to hungry families.

Losing access to SNAP will likely worsen health outcomes and could result in thousands of avoidable deaths

Research has consistently shown that access to SNAP is linked with many positive health outcomes. Beyond reducing food insecurity, which itself is associated with a lower-quality diet and multiple chronic conditions such as kidney disease and coronary heart disease, increased SNAP access has been associated with slower growth in diabetes prevalence. Additionally, people who receive SNAP are more likely to report very good or excellent health compared with similar-income populations not receiving benefits. SNAP is also linked to better access to preventive care, fewer hospitalizations, and lower health care expenditures. Perhaps most importantly, research has shown reduced rates of mortality among SNAP participants.

As more families have their food assistance cut or eliminated, they are likely to experience worsening health outcomes and increased mortality. The most significant cuts to SNAP this year will come from expanded work requirements, which limit benefit access by creating additional administrative burdens for participants to navigate.

Most adult beneficiaries work; often, they have highly unpredictable work schedules and cannot demonstrate they are meeting the 80-hour work requirement each month. If that is the case, they will get kicked off their benefits after three months. The CBO projects that SNAP participation will fall by 2.4 million people in an average month due to the Big Beautiful Bill’s work requirement expansions. Prior research on SNAP participation and mortality rates found that mortality was lower among a sample of SNAP participants than it would have been had none of them received benefits for the period of 1997–2011. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and New York University used this research to estimate that 93,000 premature deaths among recipients younger than 65 could result from losing SNAP through the added barriers to access in the House-passed reconciliation bill. After accounting for changes in the final version of the law, CAP estimates that 69,600 deaths could result from the work requirement expansions by 2040 as more people become subject to the changes when they recertify their eligibility.

Table 1 shows state estimates of these avoidable deaths using state shares from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) detailing the number of adults at risk of losing SNAP as a result of work requirement expansions for families with children age 14 and above as well as Americans ages 55 to 64. Importantly, of the CBO’s projected 2.4-million-person reduction in average monthly SNAP participation from expanded work requirements, the CBPP state numbers cannot incorporate the roughly 1-million-person reduction stemming from new restrictions to accessing work requirement waivers or the 300,000-person-reduction from subjecting veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and people aging out of foster care to the work requirements. Avoidable deaths calculated from the remaining total are distributed across states using CBPP’s state shares of total adults at risk of losing SNAP. This means the state numbers presented here will not add up to the national 69,600 total, which includes all the work requirement provisions.

As an example, in Pennsylvania, the law’s work requirement expansions for families with children and older Americans nearing retirement could result in 1,300 lives lost by 2040. But if instead Pennsylvania withdrew from SNAP altogether, the consequences would be even more grave: 31,300 people could die prematurely by 2041, based on the benefit cost shift going into effect in October 2027.

As states grapple with paying for a greater share of administrative expenses starting in October—increasing from 50 to 75 percent—and newly paying for up to 15 percent of SNAP benefits in fiscal year 2028, those that cannot cover these new costs may opt out of SNAP entirely. Table 1 shows how many avoidable deaths could result if a state were to opt out.

In January, a bipartisan coalition of state and local government leaders sent a letter to Congress and held a briefing urging lawmakers to delay the implementation of the administrative and benefit cost shifts and to exclude the period surrounding the chaotic 2025 government shutdown from being counted in error rate calculations. These changes would provide states a better chance at bringing down their payment error rates, which are directly tied to the amount they have to pay under the new law.

Conclusion

The largest cuts to SNAP in history will likely lead to worse health outcomes for low-income families and preventable deaths across the country; the law’s rushed implementation timeline will only exacerbate these effects. The 40 percent reduction in SNAP participation seen in Arizona in the first few months after the Big Beautiful Bill’s passage highlights the extent of these unnecessary added harms. All $187 billion in cuts should be reversed, but short of that, Congress can still minimize the pain families experience by giving states a more realistic implementation timeline. While state lawmakers can only take limited action to mitigate the harms of work requirements, they should do everything in their power to protect SNAP beneficiaries as they begin to take on increased costs.

The author would like to thank Lily Roberts, Emily Gee, Colin Seeberger, Natasha Murphy, Mimla Wardak, Steve Bonitatibus, Nicole Piper, and Anh Nguyen for their helpful assistance and feedback. The author would also like to thank Sameed Khatana from the University of Pennsylvania for his help calculating the nationwide estimate of premature deaths from work requirement expansions and Joseph Llobrera from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for his valuable review.