The waivers for adults without children to receive food stamps are running out, and recipients are having to meet work requirements to keep receiving benefits.
They are known as ABAWDS (able-bodied adults without minor dependents) and have long been required to work, volunteer or take job-training courses to continue receiving benefits.
But emergency rules allowed for those requirements to be dropped during the prolonged economic crisis that made jobs hard to come by.
Now, with the economy improving, the exceptions are being dropped.
Some states, such as Maine, already are requiring food stamp recipients to work, volunteer or get training,
The New York Times reports. The change will affect a million ABAWDS between 18 to 49 nationwide, the Times quoted the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities as saying.
Maine in 2014 went back to the three-month limit (over a three-year period) for childless adults.
"You've got to incentivize employment, create goals and create time limits on these welfare programs," Maine's commissioner of health and human services Mary Mayhew told the Times.
The change has dropped the number of recipients in Maine almost 80 percent, from 12,000 to 2,530.
Federal waivers are being fazed out, and although Maine still qualified this year, it opted out. Ohio Gov. John Kasich did the same for most of his state a year earlier,
The Columbus Dispatch reported in late 2013.
Another 23 states will no longer qualify for the exemptions in fiscal 2016, according to the Agriculture Department.
Advocates for the poor are critical of the changes, saying states are not required to offer work assignments before cutting off benefits. And food pantries fear a rush on their services as fewer people qualify for food stamps.
"We're going to run out of food," Sherrie Tussler, executive director of the Hunger Task Force Milwaukee," told the Times.
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