Nearly Half of Non-Citizen Households with Young Children Use Food Welfare Programs

The ongoing federal government shutdown has caused funding for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also called food stamps) to be suspended. A Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the 2024 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) shows 47 percent of households headed by non-citizens with children under age 6, the target population for WIC, use at least one of these two complementary programs. These results indicate that immigrant communities are going to be hard hit if the shutdown continues. The results also are a reminder that once low-income immigrants settle in the country, it is very difficult to prevent their use of the welfare system.

Many immigrants have modest levels of education and low incomes, so suspension of WIC and SNAP will impact a large share of this population. This situation also raises important policy questions, including whether it makes sense to have an immigration system that allows in so many people who turn to taxpayers to support their children?

Among the findings:

• The 2024 SIPP shows 47 percent of households headed by non-citizens with children under age 6 receive WIC or SNAP (or both), compared to 31 percent of U.S.-born households with young children.
• Non-citizen households account for nearly one in five of all households with young children receiving WIC or SNAP. The vast majority (96 percent) of young children in these households are U.S.-born.
• Unfortunately, the SIPP cannot be used for detailed analysis by country. However, it does show that 65 percent of households headed by non-citizens with young children from the “Americas and the Caribbean” use WIC or SNAP.¹
• Roughly half of non-citizens in the survey are illegal immigrants; however, all non-citizens are eligible for WIC, regardless of legal status. Illegal immigrants are not directly eligible for SNAP in most states, but they do receive benefits on behalf of U.S.-born children.²
• The large share of non-citizen households using these programs is not due to immigrants having very large families. Non-citizen households with young children have only 1.1 young children under 6 on average and an average of 1.9 children under 18.
• We have no evidence that the high use of these welfare programs by non-citizens reflects fraud — nor is it due to low rates of work, as the overwhelming majority of non-citizen households with young children have at least one worker.
• Heavy use of WIC and SNAP by non-citizens reflects the large share with modest levels of education and resulting low incomes. Of households with young children headed by a non-citizen without a bachelor’s degree, 66 percent use these programs, compared to 20 percent with at least a bachelor’s.
• Of all immigrant-headed households (naturalized citizens and non-citizens) with young children, 43 percent are dependent on at least one of these programs.

 End Notes

¹ In the figure with this study, we refer to this population as the “Western Hemisphere.”

² We have not yet developed an estimate for illegal immigrants in the 2024 SIPP. However, we have estimated 13.7 million illegal immigrants were in the monthly Current Population Survey in 2024. (Our total estimate of 14 million at that time includes an undercount adjustment). This means that 53 percent of non-citizens in that survey are unauthorized. A similar percentage seems likely in the SIPP. However, the SIPP shows a smaller overall foreign-born population and fewer non-citizens than the CPS, partly due to the weighting and sampling frame of each survey. The SIPP also has a larger population of people who identify as born aboard of American parents than the CPS or other Census Bureau surveys. These individuals are included with the U.S.-born in all prior studies of this kind and in this analysis as well. As best we can tell, the larger population of these individuals does not appear to make a significant difference in welfare use by nativity.