
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 25, 1994                   TAG: 9411250033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

USDA REPORT: HALF OF FOOD STAMP RECIPIENTS ARE CHILDREN

As House Republicans push a welfare-reform plan that would merge federal nutrition programs, the Clinton administration has issued a study showing that half of all food stamp recipients are children in poverty.

The Agriculture Department's Food and Consumer Service, which runs the government's largest nutrition programs, released the study this week as the debate intensified over the GOP proposal to overhaul the welfare system.

Republicans preparing to take control of the House want to consolidate several nutrition programs for the poor, including food stamps, school lunches and the supplemental feeding program for women, infants and children, and return the money to the states in a lump sum.

Under their plan, one of 10 reforms in the GOP's ``Contract With America,'' spending on nutrition assistance would be capped, and low-income families no longer would be automatically entitled to receive benefits.

Republican lawmakers argue that their proposal ends duplication among programs and gives the states greater flexibility to distribute food aid to poor families. The nutrition-assistance block grant would save $11 billion over five years, they say.

Advocates for the poor say the blueprint, if it becomes law, could lead to increased hunger and homelessness among American families because spending could not grow automatically in times of recession and rising poverty.

They say families could be kicked off the welfare rolls or put in waiting lines for benefits. Opponents of the GOP plan seized on USDA's new study to make their case that the bill would hit children, the elderly and the working poor especially hard.

The USDA report, dated Oct. 27 and released without comment from the administration, documented the food stamp-receiving population in the summer of 1993.

At the time, the program served an average of 27.3 million people living in almost 11 million households. More than half of all individuals in the program - 51.4 percent - were children. An additional 7 percent were elderly, and the rest were adults ages 18 to 59.

According to the study, food stamps represented approximately one-fourth of a family's total income. The average benefit per household was $170 a month.

The study also found that one-fifth of all families receiving food stamps were working, but not earning enough to escape poverty. Forty-two percent of households had incomes of less than half the poverty line, which was $11,890 for a family of three in 1993.

by CNB