In Texas, between 2019-2021:
- Food insecurity in Texas averaged 13.70%.
- That makes Texas the 6th-hungriest state with a food insecurity rate 32% higher than the national average of 10.4%.
- The official poverty rate (which does not account for income from safety-net and tax-support programs such as SNAP, EITC, and others) in the state averaged 12.90%.
- But using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (which does include safety-net and tax-support income), the poverty rate falls to 10.40%. In other words, these programs reduced the poverty rate in Texas by 24% and the number of people living in poverty by 713,000.
- SNAP, alone, lifted 703,000 people above the poverty line in Texas, including 369,000 children, per year between 2013 and 2017, on average.
