SNAP Cuts Threaten to Cut Young Adults Off at the Knees

Tightened work requirements and cost shifts could result in students and former foster youth losing their nutrition benefits.

The transition from childhood to adulthood can be one of the most difficult phases in a person’s life, marked as it is by a series of existential challenges: This is the critical period when we obtain education and find employment, all while seeking stability and identity. For very low-income adults between the ages of 18 and 24, a new law approved last summer by the Republican-led Congress could offer new complications, particularly in accessing a key nutrition program.

President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” dramatically slashed spending on social safety net programs. It tightened work requirements and shifted greater costs onto states, and extended tax breaks for wealthier Americans and corporations. Those cuts included a reduction in spending of $187 billion on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.

The legislation made several changes to SNAP that will particularly affect young adults, including tighter work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents—among them, eliminating a prior exemption for adults that have aged out of foster care—and shifting a greater amount of the costs of SNAP from the federal government to states.

Between July 2025, when it was passed, and February 2026, nationwide SNAP participation fell by more than 3.5 million people. This federal data was not broken down by age, but young adults are among the participants who were and will continue to be affected; one analysis estimated that nearly three million young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 are at risk of losing their SNAP benefits under the changes in the law.

“We do expect there to be a significant number of young adults who are impacted, just like the rest of the population who are impacted by SNAP,” said Crystal FitzSimons, the president of the Food Research and Action Center.

Even........

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