Fiscal Year 2020 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Quality Control Database
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest of the domestic nutrition assistance programs administered by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), providing millions of Americans with the means to purchase food for a nutritious diet. During fiscal year (FY) 2020, SNAP served an average of 39.9 million people monthly and paid out $74.2 billion in benefits, which includes the cost of emergency allotments to supplement SNAP benefits due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. In response to legislative adjustments to program rules and changes in economic and demographic trends, the characteristics of SNAP participants and households and the size of the SNAP caseload change over time. To quantify these changes or estimate the effect of adjustments to program rules on the current SNAP caseload, FNS relies on data from the SNAP Quality Control (QC) database. This database is an edited version of the raw data file of monthly case reviews conducted by State SNAP agencies to assess the accuracy of eligibility determinations and benefit calculations for each State’s SNAP caseload. The COVID-19 public health emergency resulted in an incomplete FY 2020 sample in the raw data file. FNS granted States temporary waivers on conducting QC reviews starting in March 2020. Very few States collected QC data from March 2020 through May 2020. Most States opted to conduct QC reviews from June 2020 through September 2020, although FNS was unable to provide its usual level of oversight of the sampling procedures. Furthermore, monthly State samples for this time period were often smaller than usual.
This dataset includes separate SNAP QC files for FY 2020. The first covers the “pre-pandemic” period of October 2019 through February 2020. The second covers the “waiver” period of June 2020 through September 2020 for the 47 States and territories that provided sufficient data for at least one of those months.
Resources in this dataset:
Resource Title: Fiscal Year 2020 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Quality Control Database (Period 2).
File Name: qc_pub_fy2020_per2.csv
Resource Description: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest of the domestic nutrition assistance programs administered by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), providing millions of Americans with the means to purchase food for a nutritious diet. During fiscal year (FY) 2020, SNAP served an average of 39.9 million people monthly and paid out $74.2 billion in benefits, which includes the cost of emergency allotments to supplement SNAP benefits due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. In response to legislative adjustments to program rules and changes in economic and demographic trends, the characteristics of SNAP participants and households and the size of the SNAP caseload change over time. To quantify these changes or estimate the effect of adjustments to program rules on the current SNAP caseload, FNS relies on data from the SNAP Quality Control (QC) database. This database is an edited version of the raw data file of monthly case reviews conducted by State SNAP agencies to assess the accuracy of eligibility determinations and benefit calculations for each State’s SNAP caseload. The COVID-19 public health emergency resulted in an incomplete FY 2020 sample in the raw data file. FNS granted States temporary waivers on conducting QC reviews starting in March 2020. Very few States collected QC data from March 2020 through May 2020. Most States opted to conduct QC reviews from June 2020 through September 2020, although FNS was unable to provide its usual level of oversight of the sampling procedures. Furthermore, monthly State samples for this time period were often smaller than usual. There are separate SNAP QC databases for FY 2020. The first covers the “pre-pandemic” period of October 2019 through February 2020. The second covers the “waiver” period of June 2020 through September 2020 for the 47 States and territories that provided sufficient data for at least one of those months.
Resource Title: Fiscal Year 2020 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Quality Control Database (Period 1).
File Name: qc_pub_fy2020_per1.csv
Resource Description: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest of the domestic nutrition assistance programs administered by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), providing millions of Americans with the means to purchase food for a nutritious diet. During fiscal year (FY) 2020, SNAP served an average of 39.9 million people monthly and paid out $74.2 billion in benefits, which includes the cost of emergency allotments to supplement SNAP benefits due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. In response to legislative adjustments to program rules and changes in economic and demographic trends, the characteristics of SNAP participants and households and the size of the SNAP caseload change over time. To quantify these changes or estimate the effect of adjustments to program rules on the current SNAP caseload, FNS relies on data from the SNAP Quality Control (QC) database. This database is an edited version of the raw data file of monthly case reviews conducted by State SNAP agencies to assess the accuracy of eligibility determinations and benefit calculations for each State’s SNAP caseload. The COVID-19 public health emergency resulted in an incomplete FY 2020 sample in the raw data file. FNS granted States temporary waivers on conducting QC reviews starting in March 2020. Very few States collected QC data from March 2020 through May 2020. Most States opted to conduct QC reviews from June 2020 through September 2020, although FNS was unable to provide its usual level of oversight of the sampling procedures. Furthermore, monthly State samples for this time period were often smaller than usual. There are separate SNAP QC databases for FY 2020. The first covers the “pre-pandemic” period of October 2019 through February 2020. The second covers the “waiver” period of June 2020 through September 2020 for the 47 States and territories that provided sufficient data for at least one of those months.
Resource Title: Technical Documentation for the Fiscal Year 2020 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Quality Control Database and the QC Minimodel.
File Name: FY2020TechDoc.pdf
Resource Description: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest of the domestic nutrition assistance programs administered by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), providing millions of Americans with the means to purchase food for a nutritious diet. During fiscal year (FY) 2020, SNAP served an average of 39.9 million people monthly and paid out $74.2 billion in benefits, which includes the cost of emergency allotments to supplement SNAP benefits due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. In response to legislative adjustments to program rules and changes in economic and demographic trends, the characteristics of SNAP participants and households and the size of the SNAP caseload change over time. To quantify these changes or estimate the effect of adjustments to program rules on the current SNAP caseload, FNS relies on data from the SNAP Quality Control (QC) database. This database is an edited version of the raw data file of monthly case reviews conducted by State SNAP agencies to assess the accuracy of eligibility determinations and benefit calculations for each State’s SNAP caseload. The COVID-19 public health emergency resulted in an incomplete FY 2020 sample in the raw data file. FNS granted States temporary waivers on conducting QC reviews starting in March 2020. Very few States collected QC data from March 2020 through May 2020. Most States opted to conduct QC reviews from June 2020 through September 2020, although FNS was unable to provide its usual level of oversight of the sampling procedures. Furthermore, monthly State samples for this time period were often smaller than usual. There are separate SNAP QC databases for FY 2020. The first covers the “pre-pandemic” period of October 2019 through February 2020. The second covers the “waiver” period of June 2020 through September 2020 for the 47 States and territories that provided sufficient data for at least one of those months.
Funding
USDA-FNS: 12-3198-21-F-0034
History
Data contact name
Burt, KameronData contact email
kameron.burt@usda.govPublisher
Ag Data CommonsIntended use
In response to legislative adjustments to program rules and changes in economic and demographic trends, the characteristics of SNAP participants and households and the size of the SNAP caseload change over time. The SNAP QC data is used to quantify these changes or estimate the effect of adjustments to program rules on the current SNAP caseload.Use limitations
The COVID-19 public health emergency resulted in an incomplete FY 2020 sample in the raw data file. FNS granted States temporary waivers on conducting QC reviews starting in March 2020. Very few States collected QC data from March 2020 through May 2020. Most States opted to conduct QC reviews from June 2020 through September 2020, although FNS was unable to provide its usual level of oversight of the sampling procedures. Furthermore, monthly State samples for this time period were often smaller than usual. Caution should used when working with the waiver period data for several reasons as follows. (1) Five States—California, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, and New York—and the District of Columbia do not have any data for the waiver period. Therefore, the average numbers of participants and benefits do not reflect the national caseload and so should not be compared to pre-pandemic estimates. (2) Monthly sample sizes for this time period were often smaller than usual and many States did not have data for all four months in the waiver period. As such, State results should be interpreted with caution and we recommend against using data at the individual month level. (3) FNS was unable to provide its usual level of oversight of the sampling procedures in the waiver period. Users should interpret findings from the data for this period with this caveat in mind. We recommend caution when using the following variables: •ABWDSTi •FSAFILi for State-level tabulations of nonparticipants in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, and Michigan •URBRUR for tabulations in States other than those listed above (this variable is not retained in public use file) We recommend using the following variables with disclaimers: •DISi, FSDIS, and FSNDIS (with the understanding that DISi and FSNDIS likely underestimate the number of non-elderly individuals with disabilities and that FSDIS likely underestimates the number of units containing non-elderly individuals with disabilities) •EMPRGi (with the understanding that this variable is best used in conjunction with other work-related variables) •EMPSTAi and EMPSTBi (with the understanding that these variables are best used in conjunction with other work-related variables) •FSASSET and FSVEHAST (with the understanding that only 9 percent of SNAP units have countable assets) •MN_FIP (with the understanding that this variable may slightly underestimate the number of Minnesota Family Investment Program [MFIP] units) •NDISCAi and FSNDISCA (with the understanding that NDISCAi likely overestimates the number of adults without disabilities) •SSI_CAP (with the understanding that this variable likely underestimates the actual number of SSI-CAP units) •SUPP_BEN (with the understanding that it is an indicator of eligibility for, not receipt of, the emergency allotment) •FSBENSUPP (with the understanding that it is the amount a household was estimated to have received) •WRKREGi (with the understanding that this variable is best used in conjunction with other work-related variables)Temporal Extent Start Date
2019-10-01Temporal Extent End Date
2020-09-30Theme
- Not specified
Geographic Coverage
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location - description
United StatesISO Topic Category
- economy
- health
National Agricultural Library Thesaurus terms
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; quality control; Food and Nutrition Service; diet; public health; householdsOMB Bureau Code
- 005:84 - Food and Nutrition Service
Pending citation
- No
Public Access Level
- Public