The nation’s largest food assistance program is entering a more restrictive era. For millions of low-income Americans, the change could mean a new scramble to document work hours, secure exemptions, or lose help buying groceries.
What changed in SNAP, and why ages 55 to 64 are now in the crosshairs
The biggest shift is in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s time-limited work rules for so-called able-bodied adults without dependents, commonly known as ABAWDs. Under prior federal rules, this stricter standard generally applied to adults ages 18 to 54 who did not have dependent children in their SNAP household. If they were not meeting the work requirement, they could receive benefits for only three months in a three-year period.
That rule has now been expanded under the 2025 budget reconciliation law, which federal agencies and congressional analysts say extends the SNAP time limit to adults ages 55 to 64 and also to some parents and caregivers whose youngest child is 14 or older. The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service has updated its guidance to reflect that people ages 55 to 64 can now be subject to the ABAWD time limit, while a Congressional Research Service overview says the enacted law broadened the affected population and is expected to reduce federal SNAP spending significantly over 10 years.
The distinction matters because SNAP has two different work standards. The general work requirement covers a broader group, usually adults ages 16 to 59, and includes registering for work, accepting suitable jobs, and cooperating with employment and training assignments. The tougher ABAWD rule is the one tied to the three-month benefit limit unless a person works or participates in qualifying activities for at least 80 hours a month.
USDA says people can satisfy that standard through paid work, unpaid work, volunteering, workfare, or approved employment and training activity totaling 80 hours a month. But the expansion is not just about labor market expectations. It is also about who must repeatedly prove compliance, navigate state reporting systems, and avoid administrative mistakes that can end benefits even when someone may actually qualify for an exemption or already be working enough hours.
Supporters of the policy argue that public benefits should be paired with work when possible and that the change reinforces personal responsibility. USDA messaging has emphasized that SNAP is designed to fight hunger while also encouraging work among those who can work. Opponents counter that the practical effect is less about employment and more about narrowing access to food assistance through tighter eligibility screens and stricter enforcement.
How many people could lose benefits over the next decade
The headline numbers are large, but they vary depending on which piece of the policy is being measured. According to the Congressional Budget Office estimates summarized by the Congressional Research Service, the SNAP work requirement provision in the 2025 law is expected to reduce federal SNAP outlays by about $69 billion from FY2025 through FY2034. That is a budget estimate, not a direct headcount, but it signals a major contraction in the program.
Analysts have also offered population estimates that show how broad the impact could be. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, citing CBO estimates, says about 2.4 million people in total could be cut from SNAP in a typical month under the expanded work requirement provision. That figure includes around 800,000 adults ages 55 to 64 who do not live with children, about 300,000 parents, grandparents, and other caregivers living with children age 14 and older, roughly 1 million people in areas where jobs are scarce, and more than 300,000 veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and former foster youth affected by narrowing exemptions and waiver rules.
A separate CBO-based estimate reported by ABC News focused on full benefit loss over the 2025-2034 period and said about 1.1 million people are expected to lose SNAP benefits, including 800,000 adults through age 64 without dependents and 300,000 parents or caregivers with older children. That smaller figure does not capture everyone who may see reduced household benefits rather than a total loss, which is why public discussion often mixes several different estimates.
Urban Institute researchers have argued the family-level consequences could be even wider. Their analysis found that expanded work requirements would reduce benefits for 1.2 million families with 3.6 million people, including 1.5 million children, because when one household member loses eligibility, the family’s total monthly SNAP allotment can fall even if the rest of the household remains enrolled. In their modeling, hundreds of thousands of adults ages 55 to 64 would lose all benefits, while hundreds of thousands more would lose some benefits.
That distinction is essential for understanding the policy. The question is not only how many people vanish from the rolls entirely. It is also how many households receive less help each month. In a program where USDA reports the average SNAP household received $332 per month in FY 2023, even a partial reduction can materially change what a family buys, how often they shop, and whether they rely on food pantries to bridge the gap.
Why critics say work requirements often cut food aid more than they increase work
The political case for expanding work requirements is straightforward: require able adults to work, train, or volunteer in exchange for benefits, and more people will connect to the labor market. The empirical case is much weaker. Researchers who study SNAP have repeatedly found that these policies increase exits from the program far more reliably than they increase steady employment.
One notable National Bureau of Economic Research paper found that SNAP work requirements raised program exits sharply but showed no measurable effect on employment, with only suggestive evidence of earnings gains in some specifications. That finding aligns with a wider body of research cited by policy groups across the ideological spectrum: time limits and reporting rules can reduce caseloads quickly, yet they do not necessarily solve the underlying reasons people cycle in and out of low-wage work.
Those reasons are especially relevant for adults ages 55 to 64. Many people in that group are still working, but often in physically demanding, unstable, or part-time jobs. Others are dealing with chronic pain, early-stage disability, caregiving responsibilities, or the difficulty of getting hired after a layoff late in life. Some may not qualify as formally disabled under SNAP rules, yet still struggle to maintain 80 hours of work every month or to gather the paperwork needed to prove why they cannot.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argues that work requirements do little to increase employment and instead cause many people who already work, or who should be exempt, to lose food assistance because of administrative red tape. That concern is not theoretical. SNAP compliance depends on notices, deadlines, monthly reporting, caseworker interpretation, and the ability of recipients to document fluctuating schedules in low-wage sectors where hours can change week to week.
Brookings has also noted that the debate around SNAP work rules often blurs several separate systems: general work registration, employment and training programs, and the ABAWD time limit itself. In practice, the strictest consequences attach to the time limit, not simply to whether a recipient is trying to work. That means someone can be broadly attached to the labor force and still lose benefits if they miss a procedural step, fail to log enough qualifying hours in a given month, or live in a state with limited administrative flexibility.
Who is most vulnerable, and what real-world effects could follow
Older adults on the edge of retirement are among the clearest groups at risk. People ages 55 to 64 often face a difficult mix of rising health limitations and limited income, yet they are too young to qualify for age-based SNAP treatment that generally begins at 60 and too young for Medicare until 65. For many, SNAP fills a gap during layoffs, caregiving periods, or transitions between unstable jobs.
The expansion could hit especially hard in industries where older workers are common but schedules are inconsistent, such as retail, food service, warehousing, janitorial work, home care, transportation support, and seasonal labor. An individual may work enough over several months to stay afloat financially, yet fall short of the required 80 hours in one month because of reduced shifts, illness, or an employer’s scheduling changes. In that case, the issue is not unwillingness to work but inability to guarantee a steady compliance record.
Households with children may also feel the fallout even when the rule is aimed at one adult. Urban Institute researchers warn that when a parent, grandparent, or other caregiver loses SNAP eligibility under the expanded requirement, the whole family can receive less aid. That means a policy marketed as targeting childless adults can still reduce food budgets in homes with teenagers. For many families, the result is a smaller grocery basket, fewer fresh foods, and heavier dependence on school meals, community pantries, and informal support networks.
Communities with weaker labor markets face another layer of risk. Previous SNAP policy allowed states to seek waivers for areas with insufficient jobs, softening the time limit when employment opportunities were scarce. The new law makes waivers harder to obtain, according to both congressional summaries and USDA implementation materials. As a result, people in counties with high barriers to employment may face stricter rules precisely where the job market is least forgiving.
The practical downstream effects are familiar to anti-hunger groups: more skipped meals, greater pressure on local food banks, harder choices between food and medicine, and deeper instability for people already living close to the margin. SNAP has long been one of the fastest and most effective anti-poverty tools in the federal safety net. Tightening access therefore does not just trim enrollment; it changes how economic stress is absorbed across households and communities.
What happens next for states, recipients, and the broader policy debate
Implementation is now the critical story. USDA has said it is continuing to issue guidance to states on how the 2025 law changes SNAP work requirements, exemptions, and waivers. Federal notices make clear that state agencies must update their systems and communications so that adults ages 55 to 64 are properly informed when they are subject to the ABAWD time limit. That may sound procedural, but in SNAP administration, notice language and case processing details often determine who keeps benefits and who loses them.
States will have to make choices about staffing, outreach, verification, and exemption screening. Some will likely invest more heavily in employment and training capacity or in caseworker support to reduce improper terminations. Others may struggle with administrative backlogs, particularly if they must process more work reports while also handling appeals and fair hearing requests. Because SNAP is federally funded for benefits but state-administered, the on-the-ground experience can vary sharply depending on where a person lives.
For recipients, the new rules mean that older adults who were previously outside the ABAWD age band can no longer assume they are protected from the three-month time limit. People in the 55-to-64 range may need to document work activity, volunteer hours, training participation, or qualifying exemptions much more carefully than before. That includes individuals with unstable jobs, intermittent health problems, or caregiving demands that do not fit neatly into standard eligibility categories.
The broader policy debate is unlikely to fade. Supporters will point to reduced spending and a clearer expectation that benefits be linked to work. Critics will continue to argue that the policy confuses economic hardship with noncompliance and that it punishes people whose biggest barrier is not motivation but unstable hours, age discrimination, health limitations, or bureaucratic complexity. The evidence so far suggests that stricter work rules are highly effective at shrinking SNAP participation, but much less effective at producing durable gains in employment.
That is why the expansion to ages 55 to 64 is more than a technical adjustment. It is a fundamental redefinition of who must repeatedly prove deservingness to receive food aid. Over the next decade, the real test will not be whether the rules reduce enrollment. It will be whether they improve economic security enough to justify the millions of people who stand to lose some or all of the grocery assistance they now depend on.