82,064 Louisiana Children Have Lost SNAP
Since July 2025, child SNAP participation in Louisiana has fallen 22.6 percent against 19.9 percent for adults. Children are 45.1 percent of the caseload and 48.2 percent of everyone the state has lost. The benefit amount per person did not change.
Policy Analysis & Research: Tia Fields, Safety Net Policy Analyst | Invest in Louisiana
Children Lost · 22.6% Decline
Children Lost
Off SNAP, July 2025 to June 2026
Child Decline Rate
Drop in child participation
Share of All Losses
Of the loss, against 45.1% of the caseload
Total Participants Lost
21.1% statewide decline
The Core Finding
Children Are Bearing the Heaviest Loss
Children are 45.1 percent of Louisiana's SNAP caseload and 48.2 percent of everyone who has come off the program since July 2025. They left at 22.6 percent against 19.9 percent for adults. The per person benefit did not move over that period, holding at roughly $185 a month from start to finish, which means the drop in benefit dollars is entirely a drop in people, not a cut in what each household receives. Participation fell during a period of substantial policy change. This dashboard does not claim one caused the other.
Loss Composition
Of 170,227 total lost, July 2025 to June 2026
Before and After H.R.1
Child SNAP participation, statewide.
SNAP Coverage of Poverty, Statewide
Share of Louisianans below 125% of poverty who received SNAP, monthly.
The poverty benchmark (1,079,536 residents) is a fixed OFS estimate, unchanged month to month, so the line moves only with the SNAP recipient count. Coverage fell from 74.6 percent in July 2025 to 58.9 percent in June 2026. That is a shrinking safety net reach into a fixed need population, not itself a measure of the broader economy.
What Is Driving It
Procedural Churn, Not Ineligibility
Over the twelve months through July 2026, Louisiana closed 322,048 SNAP cases. 242,560 of them, or 75.3 percent, were closed for procedural reasons. Closures for failing an income test totaled 16,017, or 5.0 percent. That is roughly fifteen procedural closures for every income based one. A procedural closure is a paperwork outcome: a form that did not arrive, a recertification packet not returned, a scheduled interview missed. It is not a finding that a household stopped being eligible. When the process becomes the barrier, eligible children are the ones who fall through.
Procedural Closures
Paperwork and process, twelve months
Income Based Closures
Failed an income test
Procedural Share
Of all closures are procedural
Legislative Data Matrix
District-Level SNAP Participation
Geocoded SNAP case counts by legislative district, mapped to all 105 House and 39 Senate seats, from LDH benefit month December 2025. Use this to see the number of SNAP households and recipients in every district, in every part of the state. Figures reflect total participants. Per district child counts are not separately published by the state and are not estimated here.
District Selection
Select a district record to view matched data.
SNAP Participation Map
Every district in Louisiana, shaded by SNAP participation. Click any district to see its numbers. Darker means higher participation within the selected chamber.
Top Districts by Recipients
Full District Lookup
Search any legislator or district to see SNAP cases, recipients, and monthly benefits. All 144 seats.
| Legislator | Chamber | District | Cases | Recipients | Total Benefits |
|---|
The Pressure Behind the Loss
The Cost Shift and the Error Rate
H.R.1 ties a new state cost match to Louisiana's payment error rate, an accuracy score measuring whether benefit amounts were calculated correctly. It is not a fraud measure, and roughly sixteen percent of Louisiana's rate is families who received too little. USDA certified Louisiana at 8.14 percent for FY2025, placing the state in the band that requires a 10 percent share of benefit costs beginning October 2027. Louisiana sits 0.14 points above the threshold, and it is the lowest rate of any state in that band nationwide. A separate provision cuts the federal share of administrative costs from 50 percent to 25 percent beginning October 2026, with no error rate trigger at all. The measure does not count an eligible household that was wrongly denied or closed. Those are tracked separately and carry no cost consequence, which means the cheapest route to a smaller bill runs through a smaller caseload.
Annual State Exposure, FY2028
$184.1M benefit cost share plus $42.3M administrative, per FRAC, August 2026. Priced on FY2025 issuance of $1.84 billion; Louisiana issuance has fallen 21 percent since.
All values are official USDA certified payment error rates. FY2024 released June 30, 2025 (Louisiana 6.62, national 10.93). FY2025 released June 24, 2026 (Louisiana 8.14, national 10.62). FY2020 and FY2021 do not exist: USDA determined it could not establish national or state rates for those years because pandemic Quality Control flexibilities left incomplete data. Any trend line drawn across that span crosses a two year hole. No projected points are shown. Louisiana's FY2025 rate rose 1.52 points from FY2024, and the entire increase is on the overpayment side; the underpayment rate improved from 1.48 to 1.30.
What Can Be Done
Shared Goals: Program Integrity and Feeding Children
Extend the Cost Shift Delay to All States
H.R.1 delays the cost shift by two years for any state whose payment error rate reaches 13.33 percent. Seven jurisdictions clear that trigger under FY2025: Alaska at 23.15, the District of Columbia at 18.66, New Mexico, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon. Louisiana, at less than half Alaska's rate, pays on time. Extending the delay to every state would give Louisiana time to improve accuracy without cutting access.
Fix the Portal and Reduce Churn
Resolving the login and document upload failures behind procedural closures improves accuracy and keeps eligible children enrolled at the same time. Reducing administrative burden serves both the state's integrity goals and its families.
Keep Children at the Center
82,064 children is a number every Louisianan can understand. Use it in coalition letters, public education, and conversations with legislative staff across the aisle to keep the focus on children who need to eat.
Methodology & Citations
Child Participation Decline: Children fell from 363,165 in July 2025 to 281,101 in June 2026, a loss of 82,064 or 22.6 percent. Adults fell 88,163 or 19.9 percent. Total participation fell from 805,633 to 635,406, a loss of 170,227 or 21.1 percent. Children were 45.1 percent of the July 2025 caseload and 48.2 percent of the decline. Both endpoints are published agency figures; percentages are author calculations. Source: Office of Family Support, SNAP recipients by children and adults, and SNAP percent of population that receive SNAP, fiscal year 2026 series, ldh.la.gov/page/program-statistics-2025-2026.
Benefit Levels: Average benefit per person per month was $184.57 in July 2025 and $186.32 in June 2026. Total issuance fell 20.4 percent over the same span. The decline in benefit dollars is a decline in participants, not a reduction in what households receive. Author calculation from Office of Family Support, SNAP benefits issued by fiscal year, and the monthly participation series.
SNAP Coverage of Poverty: Monthly share of Louisianans below 125 percent of poverty who received SNAP, statewide, fell from 74.6 percent in July 2025 to 58.9 percent in June 2026. The poverty population used as the denominator, 1,079,536 residents, is a fixed OFS estimate carried across all twelve months rather than updated monthly, so this series moves only with the SNAP recipient count and should be read as a coverage measure, not an independent poverty trend. Source: Office of Family Support, SNAP percent of population that receive SNAP, fiscal year 2026 series.
Procedural Churn: Author analysis of twelve monthly reports, SNAP cases closed by reason, covering closures effective August 2025 through July 2026. Totals: 322,048 closures, of which 242,560 procedural (75.3 percent), 55,412 other eligibility (17.2 percent), 16,017 income based (5.0 percent), 7,963 client request (2.5 percent), and 96 sanctions. No single published document contains these totals; category groupings follow the agency's own reason headings. Two caveats: the reports effective December 2025 and February 2026 appear to be duplicates, and excluding the February report entirely gives 294,405 closures at 74.8 percent procedural, so the finding does not depend on the disputed month. Separately, 34,305 closures, or 10.7 percent, fall in a line the agency labels only "Other." Underlying monthly figures available on request.
District Records: Per district SNAP cases, recipients, and benefit totals are from LDH TINA-BI geocoded SNAP cases by legislative district, benefit month December 2025, report dated February 2, 2026, covering all 105 House and 39 Senate seats. Figures reflect total participants, not children. Per district child counts are not separately published by the state and are not estimated here.
What the Payment Error Rate Measures: The sum of a state's overpayment and underpayment error rates, per Section 16(c)(2) of the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008. The two are added, not netted. It measures whether benefit amounts were calculated correctly. It does not measure fraud, and it does not count an eligible household that was wrongly denied or wrongly closed. Those are tracked separately as the Case and Procedural Error Rate, which carries no cost share consequence under H.R.1.
Louisiana's Certified Rates: FY2024 was 6.62 percent, the sum of 5.14 overpayment and 1.48 underpayment, released June 30, 2025. FY2025 is 8.14 percent, the sum of 6.84 overpayment and 1.30 underpayment, released June 24, 2026. National rates were 10.93 percent and 10.62 percent. Louisiana sat below the national average in both years and still lands in a paying band. The FY2025 tolerance threshold, below which small errors are excluded, is $57. Sources: USDA Food and Nutrition Service, SNAP Payment Error Rates Fiscal Year 2024; USDA Food and Nutrition Administration, SNAP Payment Error Rates Fiscal Year 2025, fiscal year 2025 release.
The Missing Years: USDA determined it could not establish national or state payment error rates for FY2020 or FY2021, because pandemic Quality Control flexibilities left only five months of validated FY2020 data and three months of FY2021 data. Source: USDA Food and Nutrition Service, SNAP Quality Control Error Rate Announcements for Fiscal Year 2020 and Fiscal Year 2021, February 19, 2021.
Fiscal Exposure: $42,300,000 administrative cost share, $184,075,448 benefit cost share, and $226,375,448 combined, all published by the Food Research and Action Center, Economic Strain and New SNAP Cost Shifts Under H.R. 1 Across All States, August 2026. The benefit figure is 10 percent of Louisiana's FY2025 issuance of $1,840,754,476. Two caveats a reader should have. First, that base is a year Louisiana no longer has: applying the same 10 percent band to the most recent closed state fiscal year gives $162.2 million, and to the June 2026 run rate gives $142.1 million. Second, FRAC's administrative figures are drawn from state budget documents and agency presentations rather than computed from the match rate, and where a range was published the table uses the lowest number, which makes $42.3 million a floor. The Single Audit Report implies a ceiling near $47.8 million.
What This Dashboard Does Not Claim: Participation fell 21.1 percent during a period of substantial policy change. That is correlation. Establishing causation requires a stated method, meaning a comparison state, a discontinuity test at an effective date, or a decomposition against a counterfactual. None is applied here.
Primary Sources
- Louisiana Department of Health, SNAP Program Statistics 2025 to 2026: ldh.la.gov/page/program-statistics-2025-2026
- Louisiana Department of Health, SNAP Quality Control: ldh.la.gov/page/snap-quality-control
- USDA Food and Nutrition Service, SNAP Quality Control Payment Error Rates: fns.usda.gov/snap/qc/per
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: cbpp.org