Another indicator that the economy is starting to do better is that the number of food stamp recipients is down over 2 million in Trump’s first year, which is a bigger decrease than in previous years.
Here’s the data from the Department of Agriculture:
As you can see the number of recipients has been been falling over the last few years. It peaked at over 47.6 million in 2013 and has since been coming back down with the biggest pre-Trump decrease of 1.5M in 2016.
It looks like the decreases are increasing, which is my hope, so that we can quickly get back to lower levels.
Just for the sake of comparison, when George W. Bush took office in 2001 the number of recipients was just over 17.3 million. That had fallen from a high in previous years of nearly 27.5 million in 1994. However starting in 2000, we’ve been on an upward trend, with Bush’s presidency ending at just over 28 million in 2008. The Obama years then put those numbers on steroids.
If a 2 million rate of decrease can be sustained, and I see no reason why it can’t, then at the end of Trump’s first time we can be back down to 36 million. Actually I’d expect even bigger decreases considering the new tax bill that’s going into effect for this year, which would be fantastic.