How Many People Around You Receive Food Stamps? This Tool Shows You.

The number of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — also known as food stamps — recipients in the U.S. has more than doubled since the turn of the century and it varies widely by state and even more so by counties within states.

You can find out how many people receive food stamp benefits in your area by using an interactive widget that Slate created.

Some of the awesome features of the Slate widget:

  • Click on any county to quickly navigate around each state.
  • They’re color-coded. You can see at a glance which counties have a higher population of people receiving SNAP benefits. The darker the blue, the poorer the region.
  • You can see the exact number of people receiving food stamps, the percentage of your county’s population, the growth since 2000, the total amount funded for the counties, and the amounts each person receives by month and year.
  • Search by city name or zip code.
  • You can instantly tweet individual statistics, such as this one for San Francisco County.

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In my area, Kaufman County, Texas, 14 percent of the people receive food stamps and that number has grown by 260 percent since 2000.?Just a little North of us — Collin County, known to be fairly affluent — shows that only four percent of the county’s population receive food stamps. One thing is important to note, however: Collin County has seen a 553 percent growth in food stamp recipients since 2000, which is huge.

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It’s also fun to find known liberal areas of the country and see how their food stamp participation differs from poor areas of the country. In Texas, for example, people are just poor all over, which contrasts with the image that Republican Gov. Rick Perry would like to portray.

If I take this home to where I grew up in rural Northwest Arkansas, I’m shocked to see that 21 percent of the population in Logan County receives food stamps. This falls into place with what I know about this region. A few years ago, the county’s largest employer shut down its operations due to a fire that destroyed a huge meat processing plant. However, the growth has been lower than normal as compared to the rest of the country. The proportion has grown only 103 percent since 2000. This suggests that the area was already quite poor, even before the shutdown of the meat processing plant.

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Liberal San Francisco County in California only shows five percent of their population as receiving food stamps. I found, however, that political leanings of a region make little difference in most cases. It just varies too widely.

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This is a fun tool to play with and it’s great for researchers. You can access it here.

I had a successful career actively working with at-risk youth, people struggling with poverty and unemployment, and disadvantaged and oppressed populations. In 2011, I made the decision to pursue my dreams and become a full-time writer. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.