In recent months, Mississippi made fewer errors when determining payment for its food assistance program, according to the most recent data from the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
Mississippi will still owe the federal government at least $80 million to continue running the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, based on its latest data tracking error rates and changes to federal law. However, that amount could rise to $120 million if the state distributes too much – or too few – benefits to people enrolled in the program.
Under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump last summer, the cost of food assistance benefits will shift from the federal government to states. A state’s payment is based on its error rate for the SNAP program. A payment error rate measures how accurately each state determines the number of SNAP dollars an eligible person receives.
Experts say the metric does not comprehensively measure the program’s success and that it wrongly incentivizes states to deny eligible people. Some experts warn states may be unable to afford to keep their programs running at all.
“When in doubt, states could err on the side of just cutting or denying a household, because the fiscal penalty of approving and issuing benefits that are in the wrong amount far outweigh denying that household,” said Joseph Llobrera, senior director of research for the Food Assistance Policy team at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
A payment error rate includes when states pay too little or too much toward benefits, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but Llobrera said this rate does not include inaccurate denials.
While payment accuracy is important, Llobrera said the success of the SNAP program hinges on its ability to balance multiple priorities, including accessibility. Llobrera sees the federal law as shifting these priorities out of balance.
“It has put all the emphasis on that payment accuracy measure and lowering those payment error rates, without any guards against making access worse for people who need that food assistance,” Llobrera said.
Already, Mississippi is one of the nation’s hungriest states. Nearly one in five Mississippians are food insecure, according to data from Feeding America, a national network of food banks and related services.
At what cost?
In fiscal year 2024, the most recent publicly available data, Mississippi had an error rate of 10.69% – below the national average, but still putting the state on the hook for the maximum penalty. A state with an error rate over 10% will have to begin paying 15% of its SNAP program benefit costs, previously covered by the federal government. Twenty-one states with error rates over 10% are in that position.
But Mississippi is now at 9.43% according to unpublished data from the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, said Mark Jones, director of communications at the Mississippi Department of Human Services. States will only be judged for fiscal year 2025 or 2026 – whichever is lower. If the downward shift continues, Mississippi will qualify for a lesser penalty of $80 million – though that amount will still be a huge hit to the state’s budget.
The department has reduced errors by providing more training for staff who determine if people are eligible to receive SNAP and by reminding recipients about the importance of updating income changes to ensure their paperwork is accurate, Jones said.
On May 13, during an interview with SuperTalk Mississippi, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves applauded the reduction. Reeves said it is proof that his decision to make Mississippi the only state in the nation to ban what’s called “simplified reporting” and shift to a more complicated system called “change reporting” has been successful in combatting fraud.
A simplified reporting system allows recipients to wait until their six-month redetermination to report minor changes to their income, household size or address. A change reporting system requires recipients to report all changes within 10 days.
“You should become ineligible the day you become ineligible,” Reeves said during the segment. “With simplified reporting, they only check eligibility – it depends, but every six months, every nine months, every 12 months.”
But experts have said Mississippi’s error rate would be even lower if the state did not use a system that generates so much additional paperwork. This year, lawmakers tried to adopt a system to simplify reporting the way every other state has, but the measure ultimately failed.
Fraud has been proven rare in the SNAP program, which has one of the most rigorous systems to determine eligibility and payment accuracy among safety net programs, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
What’s next?
Nationwide, fewer people have enrolled in SNAP since 2024. But that “troubling” trend of decline has been expedited since the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill took effect in July, according to Theresa Lau, senior policy counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Between January and July of 2025, SNAP participation dropped by about 4% in Mississippi. But in the six months after the federal law took effect in July, that decline more than doubled to over 8%.
There’s no way to tell if this is due to an increase in denials, Lau said. But she believes at least part of it can be attributed to the federal law. In addition to the penalty for error rates, it also expanded work requirements for older adults, which experts believe is causing eligible enrollees to get kicked off or not apply to the SNAP program.
The federal changes place burdens on beneficiaries and states, Lau said. It will be difficult for states to shoulder the increased paperwork, while paying tens of millions of dollars more from their budgets each year, and still maintain access. For families, that will mean going without food.
“You’re talking about a lot of kids and families having to pick between buying food or paying rent or going to the doctor,” Lau said. “It’s going to have a huge impact on those who are struggling to make ends meet.”
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