{"id":12631,"date":"2018-04-20T13:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=12631"},"modified":"2018-04-20T13:06:15","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T17:06:15","slug":"report-nearly-10-percent-of-ocean-county-residents-on-food-stamps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2018\/04\/report-nearly-10-percent-of-ocean-county-residents-on-food-stamps\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Nearly 10 Percent of Ocean County Residents on Food Stamps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/colleenodea.carto.com\/viz\/111d76e3-e069-4428-8cbf-c76c46411c33\/embed_map\" width=\"100%\" height=\"520\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ocean County residents, largely outside the traditional commuting distance from high-paying employers in New York City and Philadelphia, have one of the state&#8217;s highest-reliance on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.<\/p>\n<p>According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.njspotlight.com\/stories\/18\/04\/19\/interactive-map-where-new-jerseyans-are-hungriest\/\">report compiled by NJ Spotlight<\/a>, a website that analyzes public policy statewide, 9.1 percent of county residents receive food benefits from the joint federal-state program. In all, 54,272 people were enrolled in the program in July 2017, when the data was collected, with the average per-person monthly benefit adding up to $97.<\/p>\n<p>The news website&#8217;s map shows stark differences between the state&#8217;s 21 counties. Counties with poor, urban areas have the largest percentages of residents who rely on the program, but some of the state&#8217;s suburban counties also had numbers.<\/p>\n<p>Monmouth County, with more train and waterway access to New York, had almost half the rate of participation as Ocean County, with 5.1 percent of residents receiving benefits.<\/p>\n<p>Ocean County residents received a total of $5,280,552 in SNAP benefits per month last year.<\/p>\n<p>While tourism injects $4.6 billion into the state&#8217;s economy, data has shown employees of tourism-based businesses generally receive wages far lower than the state average. The county&#8217;s distance from New York and Philadelphia, where the majority of the region&#8217;s highest-paying jobs are located, have also had an impact.<\/p>\n<p>The Ocean County freeholder board raised concerns last year that the state&#8217;s 23-cent gas tax hike would disproportionately affect local residents, as data has shown Ocean County workers has the highest percentage of out-of-county commuters statewide.<\/p>\n<p>Hunterdon County had the fewest number of residents receiving benefits, at 2.1 percent, and rural Cumberland County had the highest rate, at 17.7 percent.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fcbkbttn_buttons_block\" id=\"fcbkbttn_left\"><div class=\"fb-share-button fcbkbttn_large_button \" data-href=\"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2018\/04\/report-nearly-10-percent-of-ocean-county-residents-on-food-stamps\/\" data-type=\"button_count\" data-size=\"large\"><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ocean County residents, largely outside the traditional commuting distance from high-paying employers in New York City and Philadelphia, have one of the state&#8217;s highest-reliance on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. According to a report compiled by NJ Spotlight, a website that analyzes public policy statewide, 9.1 percent of county residents [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[24,305,1592,3312],"class_list":["post-12631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ocean-county","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-food-stamps","tag-ocean-county","tag-snap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/3600883127_3d3ff20bdf_o.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-3hJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}