A particularly vile AI-generated video has been making the rounds of social media. In the video, black women threaten to loot grocery stores if their SNAP benefits are cut off as result of the ongoing government shutdown. One of the women—who it bears repeating does not exist— goes on to say that she needs SNAP because none of her seven “baby daddies” supports her. Sadly, trash such as this gains currency because it reflects a wide misunderstanding of who receives SNAP and deflects blame from current policies that exacerbate American poverty.
When asked about SNAP running out of money, President Trump shrugged and said, “They’re largely Democrats.” Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville echoes the president, claiming “it’s [Democrats’] constituents—a lot of them in some of these inner cities—that’s gonna need SNAP to survive.” Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana took the racial stereotyping of SNAP recipients a step further, arguing that families who hadn’t stored up food in advance should “stop smoking crack.” And Mike Davis, a prominent right-wing legal scholar called for recipients to “Get off your fat, ghetto asses. Get a job. Stop reproducing. Change your shitty culture.” Fox News even briefly covered the “baby daddy” video as real.
Aside from being gross and dehumanizing, the stereotype of SNAP recipients being largely people of color from the inner city is simply wrong. As I explained in my recent FREOPP paper, “The Challenge of Rural Poverty,” those living in rural areas are more likely to receive food stamps than those living in urban communities. Roughly 14.4 percent of rural households receive SNAP compared with just 11.3 percent of urban families.
The ten states with the highest reliance on SNAP are New Mexico, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. With the exception of Pennsylvania, these are not states featuring multiple metropolises.
SNAP use is higher in rural communities for the simple reason that poverty is higher. The same is true of other social welfare programs from TANF to Medicaid.
Many casual observers see poverty as largely an urban phenomenon. In reality, however, rural poverty is both more common and deeper than urban poverty. In 2023, for example, the official U.S. poverty rate was 11.1 percent. However, in rural areas, it was a significantly higher 13.6 percent. In urban areas, it was just 10.7 percent, lower than the national rate. Rural areas are more likely to have higher rates of near-poverty, meaning income between 100 percent and 125 percent of the poverty level.
The current precariousness of SNAP benefits—which will be temporary—is just one of several threats to rural wellbeing. President Trump’s trade wars with America’s closest trading partners have exacerbated ongoing problems by spiking the prices of farm equipment, fertilizer, fuel and other foundations of the rural economy already reeling from the Russia-Ukraine war. His recent deal with China on soybeans only partially mitigates the problems his tariffs caused.
And, while the president has promised to bail out farmers, evidence from Trump’s first term suggests that most of that money will go to large agribusiness rather than to small family farms even though it is the small farmers who are more important to their communities, and are suffering more. Recall that during the first Trump term, farm bankruptcies rose 24 percent.
The pain imposed on rural America by the president’s tariff regime will worsen not just economic problems, but it will also worsen the social and cultural ills that often accompany economic struggles.
Rural populations trail urban and suburban areas in work, education, and marriage, and continue to fall further behind. Unemployment is higher in rural areas and average wages lower. Roughly 54 percent of children in rural areas are born outside of marriage, compared to 45 percent of those born in urban areas. Moreover, the proportion of children living in single-parent households is increasing more rapidly in rural areas than in urban ones.
Some 47 million Americans receive SNAP benefits, nearly 40 percent of whom are children. Kevin Corinth of the American Enterprise Institute has estimated the loss of SNAP benefits would push as many as 2.9 million people below the poverty line. And, while it shouldn’t matter, most of those would be white; 89.4 percent would be U.S.-born citizens; nearly one in three would be elderly or disabled; and 83 percent of those who are able-bodied adults are working. And, significantly, most of those Americans would come from rural communities in ruby red states represented by the very legislators who are condemning the program.
None of this suggests that SNAP hasn’t grown faster than it should in recent years, or that it doesn’t need important reforms. That millions of Americans could go hungry because of congressional dysfunction shows the government is doing a poor job of helping people escape poverty over the long term. Poorer Americans of every kind are suffering because of the shutdown and the policies that preceded and coincide with it.
As the crisis continues, policymakers should abandon prejudicial stereotypes and help Americans who need it by reopening the government and pursuing reforms that will strengthen the economy, communities, and families all across America—including those in rural areas.