New data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows Georgia had one of the highest error rates in the country when determining who is eligible for federal food assistance — and how much assistance they can receive.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps, provided benefits to about 13% of Georgia’s population, 1.4 million people, during the 2024 fiscal year. The payment error rate measures how accurately a state determines assistance eligibility by combining under issuances and over issuances to households.
Georgia’s payment error rate during fiscal 2024 was 15.6%, exceeded only by Alaska and the District of Columbia. The national payment error rate was 10.93%.
Most of Georgia’s errors came from the over payments category. These include payments to households that are ineligible for SNAP, and payments to households that are eligible for SNAP but received more assistance than they should have.
When overpayments are discovered, states can establish claims for repayment.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
“People often conflate the error rate as a rate of fraud, and that is not the case,” said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst on the food assistance team at the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Most of those errors are unintentional mistakes.”
Periodic reporting is a major factor in the state’s high payment error rate, said Ellen Brown, a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Human Services, which administers SNAP through the Division of Family and Children Services. The policy requires households certified for more than six months to file a report at the midpoint of that period for benefits to continue.
About 40% of Georgia’s errors can be attributed to the reporting requirement, Brown said.
“Periodic reporting allows no flexibility for an incomplete periodic report,” Brown said in an email. “For example, it is incomplete if a client misses a single checkbox.
“In any circumstance that a periodic report is found to be incomplete, the entire benefit allotment that the client received, unrelated to accuracy of the (allotment),” is considered an error.
That’s different from a simple overpayment, when just the excess benefit is counted as an error, Brown said.
Inaccurately reported salaries and household income also contributed to Georgia’s errors, said Kim Betton, a spokesperson for the USDA.
Metro Atlanta counties have the most SNAP participants in Georgia, according to Brown.
SNAP was previously fully funded by the federal government. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, requires states to share food benefit costs based on their respective payment error rates.
But Georgia’s payment error rate is so high it could qualify for a delay in cost-share policy implementation, according to Bergh.
The state’s payment error rate has remained higher than the national average for several years. Brown said the Department of Human Services is considering rolling back periodic reporting and is using a technology tool previously used in fraud detection to identify and correct potential case errors.
Credit: John Moore
Credit: John Moore
She added that limited information on assistance applications and high caseworker workload demands can complicate the eligibility determination process.
Increasing investments in data analysis technology and staff training could also help, Bergh said, adding that the feasibility of those investments will be affected by reductions in federal funding for state SNAP administrative costs.
“States have never had an incentive to make it harder for eligible people to access benefits,” Bergh said, “but if they’re on the hook for a portion of those benefit costs, now they do.”
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
