Over 4 Million More Americans On Food Stamps

December 18, 2008 3:36 p.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - The number of people receiving food stamps is up this year over last year.

Latest figures on the program are from September and show that 31,586,934 people received food stamps that month versus 26,929,496 for the same month in 2007. The number of people on food stamps in September was also up by more than 2 million people from August.

Since unemployment has continued to increase since September, the October, November and December statistics on the number of people on food stamps will probably also show large increases when those figures become available.

To qualify for food stamps households must meet an income eligibility test, their gross income can't be higher than 130 percent of poverty level and their net income can't be more than 100 percent of poverty level.

The dollar amount of food stamps that households gets varies according to a formula based on their incomes.