The first thing to realize when it comes to those that are laborers in what are considered to be the traditional fields of employment, is that the pay frequency of those so working, varies from being monthly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, or weekly. Not too surprisingly, the more infrequently people receive their paycheck, we find that, especially for those that do not have a lot in material assets, that the navigation around the knowledge that their next paycheck is perceived to be of a long distance away, can readily lead to some degree of difficulty in their thus managing their day-to-day expenses, bills, as well as other obligations. In other words, those without a lot of savings or the means to access short-term loans on a reasonable basis, will invariably find themselves in the type of situation in which they will have to tighten their belt, so as to deal with the fact that their access to their next paycheck is uncomfortably far away.
When we take into fair account, that the need for food, is a biological necessity, of which, people that are hungry are often quite uncomfortable when they are lacking some reasonable degree of food security or access to such – it thus doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense that food stamps are allocated only once a month. As might be expected, those that have to utilize food stamps, are often the very same people that do not have a lot of excess monetary capital lying about their premises, and further to the point, are the very same people that are quite vulnerable to suffering from food insecurity. While it most definitely is quite helpful as well as being beneficial to those that are the recipients of food stamps, the point of the matter is that most people require three meals in a day, of which, that equates to people needing to eat around 90 meals in a month. So then, when the voucher so being provided to get that food, must cover the entire month of meals, we thus come upon a construct in which upon receiving that allocation, a significant amount of those people will often feel “food rich” at that point, only to discover later and to their dismay, that halfway through the month, that they thus feel “food poor.” In fact, we read at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov that in a study, “ SNAP participants, adjusted mean food spending decreased 37% from the first 2 weeks to the last 2 weeks of the SNAP benefit month.” This clearly indicates that the people so receiving those food stamps are not very good at allocating their food purchases so that such would be equally distributed throughout the month.
It would seem, that a better way to distribute SNAP monthly allocations, would be to disburse such more than once a month. After all, for those that deplete their monthly allocation too quickly, the wait for the next month’s allocation of such, seems interminable. Further to the point, for all those that have a tendency to stock up on a bunch of food items, all in one visit, the division of that food stamp allocation to semi-monthly or similar, would cut back on not only those impulse purchases, but also would help to re-direct what is so being purchased to those items which more appropriately fit the budget at hand. Quite frankly, the governmental skillset so needed to adjust food stamp allocations to something more frequent, doesn’t seem all that daunting, thereby signifying that the government should put into practice, that very thing.