The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest federal nutrition program in the United States, serving roughly 42 million individuals in February 2025. It provides support to low-income individuals and families to purchase food, playing a critical role in reducing food insecurity and supporting healthy development. Roughly 40% of SNAP recipients are youth, making the program essential to ensuring the health of America’s young people.
In July 2025, H.R. 1—a federal budget bill also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—reversed a 2023 bipartisan exemption that allowed youth aging out of the foster care system to receive SNAP benefits regardless of work or school status through age 24. As a result, an estimated 15,000-20,000 former foster youth per year are now at risk of losing access to essential nutrition assistance. Youth aging out of the foster care system are one of the highest risk populations of youth in the United States, facing substantially greater rates of unemployment, housing instability, and poverty than their peers.
This policy brief hightlights how the Federal Government should reinstate work and training requirement waivers that allow youth aging out of the foster care system to continuously access SNAP benefits; States should offer high quality, youth friendly extended foster care services to youth aging out of care; States should align transition services for youth aging out of foster care with Federal SNAP work and training requirements to ensure youth are eligible for SNAP benefits; and Federal and state governments should protect data on food insecurity, particularly data on food insecurity among youth aging out of foster care.
