What percentage of the military draw food stamps for their family? If you can find this information, please indicate whether or not it is a percentage of the total military or just enlisted.

’Military families on food stamps? It's not an urban myth. About 25,000 families of servicemen and women are eligible, and this may be an underestimate, since the most recent Defense Department report on the financial condition of the armed forces--from 1999--found that 40 percent of lower-ranking soldiers face "substantial financial difficulties." Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, reports hearing from constituents that the Army now includes applications for food stamps in its orientation packet for new recruits.’ (April 2004) www.progressive.org

However, it seems that food stamp eligibility is calculated on cash income (and family size) and doesn’t take into account the in-kind ‘pay’ for military personnel – like housing:

’As to food stamps, the situation is even more complicated considering that the Department of Agriculture uses two main criteria to determine eligibility for food stamps: income and family size. If your income is below a certain level, you qualify. In the military, cash given to those who live off base is counted as part of one's income in determining food stamp eligibility. Actual housing provided by the military (whether on or off base) is not counted, however. Thus, if a servicemember has a low income (i.e., is low in rank), lives in military housing, has an unemployed spouse, and has a large family, it's quite possible she or he will qualify for food stamps. Even those who live off base and receive the cash housing allowance might qualify with a big enough family.’ (April 2001) www.washingtonmonthly.com

The article is from 1997, and the report it concentrates on is from 1995, but this is from Defenselink.mil:

"About 11,900 junior enlisted service members and their families receive food stamps, according to a 1995 DoD report.
Pentagon officials consider this a problem, but not a major one because it affects only about 0.8 percent of the 1.5 million people in the military, said Ken Bacon, Pentagon spokesman."

1.5 million is about what I remember seeing recently for the number of people on active duty.

Should have kept looking around defenselink before posting.

This gives a little more on that 1995 study. It was apparently a survey rather than a complete accounting, but the survey covered about 1/3^rd of the military. It also says that the numbers declined between 1992 and 1995.



From 2000:
"The military doesn't keep statistics on members receiving food stamps, but DoD officials have estimated that about 6,300 households articipate. That's less than one-half percent of the force, they said, and the members in question generally have larger-than-average families."

It would seem that that is based on a study from 1999, discussed here. It says 6,300 out of 1.4 million active duty.

It talks about the Family Subsistence Supplemental Allowance, which increases pay for those qualifying for food stamps. It considers on and off-base populations separately and estimated that, if everyone who is elligible applied, less than 100 members living off-base would be eligible for food stamps in 2002. The on-base population is expected to fall less quickly.

The total estimated members of the active-duty military on food stamps, forecasted to 2005, is just shy of 2,000, according to this document.



Also from Defenselink in 2000:
"A 1998 Rand Corp. study concluded that one-fifth of enlisted service members felt financially squeezed. One- quarter of enlisted personnel reported having received food stamps, welfare or other public assistance in the past year."

Thanks for the info, Methos, as usual. I don't know any numbers on the subject, but I do know that when I shop at the base commissary here, there are lots of things on the shelves listed as "WIC (Women, Infants, Children) Eligible", so I guess it's still an issue.

Cincy

Off topic, but any store that accepts WIC checks has to put those lables up, regardless of how many people who shop there actually use WIC checks. Just like grocery stores have to have a system in place to tally food stamp eligible foods separately from non-eligible foods, even if no one who shops there uses food stamps.

However, in my experience, the majority of lower ranked enlisted families, in the Air Force at least, use or have used WIC. I don't know anyone who uses food stamps but I don't imagine that'd be talked about as much.