Giving Compass' Take:

• Brianna Provenzano reports that SNAP work requirements would have a negative impact on the LGBTQ community - although data gaps make it hard to quantify. 

• How can funders help to fill in LGBTQ data gaps? What unintended consequences would work requirements bring about? 

• Learn more about work requirements. 

In the final days of 2018, the Department of Agriculture announced that it would take steps to institute a series of rule changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—still known colloquially as food stamps—designed to "restore the [nutrition assistance] system to what it was meant to be: assistance through difficult times, not lifelong dependency." If enacted, the new restrictions would do away with a waiver program that grants exceptions to non-disabled SNAP beneficiaries between the ages of 18 and 49 with no dependents, who would otherwise be obligated to participate in a work program for at least 20 hours each week.

According to the results of a nationally representative survey published by the Center for American Progress in 2018, LGBT respondents reported receiving SNAP assistance at a rate of more than twice that of the survey's non-LGBT respondents. Caitlin Rooney, a research assistant at CAP, says that those findings can be attributed, in part, to the rampant employment discrimination that can "impede LGBTQ people's ability to attain and maintain economic security."

"We know one in five LGBTQ people have faced discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and we also know that one in five of them have faced discrimination when it comes to equal pay and promotions," Rooney says. "We know trans people are three times more likely to be unemployed than the general population. We know LGBTQ people have a harder time finding employment and keeping that employment because of pervasive discrimination, and these types of harsh requirements don't take that into account."

Only a few government surveys ask respondents to record data on their sexuality or gender identity, leaving critical gaps for researchers interested in probing discrepancies along other demographic lines within the LGBT community. Transgender people are particularly underrepresented, and food insecurity data marks a striking instance of the failure to sufficiently record the lived experiences of trans Americans at the federal level.

Read the full article about SNAP work requirements by Brianna Provenzano at Pacific Standard.