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Food Stamp Program Information
The Food Stamp Program is a Federally funded program that helps low-income people buy the food they need for good health. For most households, food stamps are only part of their food budget, they must spend some of their own cash along with their food stamps benefits in order to buy enough food for a month.
Food Stamp Household Profile*
The following is a selection of some of the key characteristics of the households receiving food stamps in FFY 2005.
| Average Age of Head of Household | 37.3 years |
| Average age of child: | 8.2 years |
| Average number of persons per household: | 2.6 |
| Recipients who are U.S. citizens: | 91% |
| Recipients who are female heads of households: | 77.5% |
| Household completing at least 12 years of education: | 56.8% |
| Single-person Food Stamp only households: (% of all Non-Assistance Households) | 42.7% |
| Food Stamp households that have received food stamps for five years or more: | 16% |
| Food Stamp households with earnings: | 19.2% |
| Average Food Stamp allotment per household | $249 |
| Food Stamp Recipients that also Receive CalWORKS (including two-parent program)Benefits | 47.2% |
| Food Stamp Households that also Receive CalWORKS (including two-parent program)Benefits | 42.6% |
| Ethnicity of head of household: | Hispanic 39% White 26% Black 24% Other 11% |
| Ethnicity of the food stamp recipients: | Hispanic 54% White 18% Black 18% Other 10% |
*Based upon Q5 data for FFY2006