When SNAP Doesn't Cover the Gap, Groceries Go on the Credit Card

SNAP's own benefit formula has fallen short of actual grocery costs in most U.S. counties for years, and more than 5 million people lost the program entirely in the past year under new federal work requirements. The government's own survey data shows most working-age adults are already covering grocery costs with credit cards, and a meaningful share with Buy Now, Pay Later or payday loans — with real, measured rates of missed payments on all three.

Does SNAP actually cover the cost of groceries?

Not in most of the country. The Urban Institute's meal-cost analysis, built on SNAP's own benefit formula, found that the program's average maximum benefit fails to cover the estimated cost of a modestly priced meal in 98% of U.S. counties. As of the last quarter of 2023, that gap ran about 53 cents per meal — a $3.37 estimated meal cost against a $2.84 average maximum benefit — adding up to an estimated $49–$59 shortfall per person, per month.

It wasn't always this wide. USDA's 2021 re-evaluation of the Thrifty Food Plan — the cost model that sets SNAP benefit levels — raised benefits by 21% and cut the share of counties with any gap from 96% down to 21%. But SNAP benefits are adjusted for inflation on a lag, and persistently elevated food prices since 2022 have eroded that improvement, pushing the share of underfunded counties back up toward its earlier level.

Fewer people have SNAP at all right now

On top of a structural benefit gap, SNAP eligibility itself has narrowed sharply. The Food Research & Action Center's tracking of USDA data shows 37,011,096 people enrolled in SNAP as of April 2026 — down roughly 5.8 million from January 2025, with 5,001,734 of that decline occurring specifically since the July 4, 2025 signing of the federal budget reconciliation law known as H.R. 1.

The law substantially expanded who has to meet SNAP's work requirements. The age range for "able-bodied adults without dependents" subject to a work requirement grew from 18–54 to 18–64. Parents and caretakers whose youngest child is 14 or older are now subject to the same requirement — previously, a dependent child of any age was an exemption. Standing exemptions for veterans, former foster youth, and people experiencing homelessness were eliminated outright. Anyone who can't document at least 20 hours a week of qualifying work, training, or volunteering is limited to three months of SNAP benefits within a three-year period.

What are people actually doing to cover the gap?

The Urban Institute's Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey — a nationally representative survey of more than 7,500 working-age adults fielded in December 2025 — found 63.2% had used a credit card to buy groceries in the previous year. Of those: 34.9% paid the balance in full each month, 19.6% carried a balance while still making minimum payments, and 8.7% did not consistently make even the minimum payment — up from 7.1% when the Institute last measured this in 2023.

Buy Now, Pay Later use for groceries was smaller but rising: nearly 1 in 10 working-age adults used BNPL to pay for groceries, and among them, 34.8% missed a payment. That usage skewed sharply toward lower incomes — 10.8% of low-income and 12.8% of moderate-income adults used BNPL for groceries, versus 5.4% of higher-income adults. Separately, 19.6% of respondents said they'd paid for groceries using savings not intended for daily expenses, and 5.2% had used cash from a recent payday loan.

None of this data proves a direct line from a specific person's SNAP loss to a specific credit card balance — the survey measures grocery-payment behavior broadly, not SNAP status specifically. What it does show is a government-grade benefit that already didn't cover the cost of groceries in most counties, now reaching millions fewer people, at the same time a large and growing share of working-age adults are financing groceries on terms that a meaningful minority can't consistently repay.

Why don't we have better data on this going forward?

Because the federal government stopped collecting it. USDA's Household Food Security report — an annual survey running continuously since 1997 — found 13.7% of U.S. households food insecure at some point in 2024, similar to 13.5% in 2023, with 5.4% experiencing the more severe "very low food security." In September 2025, USDA announced it was discontinuing the report, describing it as "redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous." The 2024 edition is now the final one in the series — meaning there's no equivalent federal tracking in place to measure what happens to food insecurity as the SNAP eligibility changes above take full effect.

What to do if groceries are already going on a card you can't pay off

If a grocery-driven credit card balance has grown past what you can pay down, see Credit Card Debt for how collection, credit reporting, and payoff options work, or Buy Now, Pay Later Debt if it's a BNPL balance specifically. If a collector has already reached out about an unpaid balance, start with what to do the first time a collector contacts you. If the balance is large enough that paying it down on your own isn't realistic, compare debt consolidation, settlement, and bankruptcy before committing to a path.

Methodology

SNAP benefit-adequacy data (Urban Institute): county-level meal-cost-versus-benefit analysis, data as of the fourth quarter of 2023 — the most recent period cited in the Institute's published gap estimate.

SNAP participation and policy-change data (Food Research & Action Center, tracking USDA figures): monthly national SNAP participation data through April 2026, and H.R. 1's specific statutory changes to able-bodied-adult and parent/caretaker work-requirement rules, effective following the law's July 4, 2025 enactment.

Grocery-payment behavior (Urban Institute): Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey, a nationally representative survey of 7,500+ working-age adults fielded in December 2025. This is self-reported survey data about payment behavior, not a transaction-level audit or a study of SNAP recipients specifically.

Food insecurity data (USDA Economic Research Service): "Household Food Security in the United States in 2024," the final report in a series discontinued by USDA in September 2025.

What this page doesn't claim: that any individual's SNAP loss directly caused their credit card or BNPL balance — the survey data on grocery-payment behavior and the SNAP participation data come from separate sources and aren't linked at the household level. What's verifiable and presented together here: a structural gap between SNAP benefits and grocery costs, a sharp recent drop in how many people have SNAP at all, and independently measured, rising reliance on credit to cover food costs generally.