It's the question Kathryn Hoffman hates to ask, especially of the elderly people who come into her office looking for help.

Do you have a burial plot? How much is it worth?

But that question is one of many Hoffman must ask as a food stamp outreach coordinator at Second Harvest Food Bank of the Lehigh Valley and Northeast Pennsylvania in Allentown. It's her job to help people gather the information they need for the caseworkers who make eligibility decisions on the federally funded food stamp program.

The burial plot question is part of a nearly year-old procedure known as an asset test. Gov. Tom Corbett's administration reinstituted the test — on top of existing income-verification checks — to make sure food stamp applicants aren't sitting on other forms of personal wealth such as inheritances, savings and checking accounts, stocks and bonds, a second car, a boat or plane.

"A lot of people have burial plots they have inherited," Hoffman said. "That's supposed to go to the assets. So they have to get the value of a burial plot. That can be hard and [sometimes] you're asking people in their 80s to do this … I feel bad having to ask it."

When the Department of Public Welfare reinstituted the asset test last May — five years after it was discontinued by former Gov. Ed Rendell during the Great Recession — officials said it was needed to stop "waste, fraud and abuse" by keeping wealthy individuals off the public dole while the number of food stamp recipients was climbing.

"People with over $100,000 were applying for food stamps and that's exactly why this program is in place," said Anne Bale, spokeswoman for the Public Welfare Department.

But some lawmakers, Rendell, and advocates of the poor and elderly panned the plan as an unnecessary, time-consuming government regulation. The critics said the asset test would clobber struggling families in a bad economy, and force more families to rely on soup kitchens. The household limits range from $5,500 to a maximum of $9,000.

So far the test has not uncovered a lot of fraud. But it has caused a lot of confusion and heartache for assistance liaisons such as Hoffman, and for state welfare caseworkers who work locally and grapple with enormous caseloads.

Of the 1.8 million state residents who applied for food stamps this year, about 4,000 — less than 1 percent — were either removed from the system or had their applications rejected because of the asset limit, Bale said.

"When you have 1.8 million in the program and it only affects 4,000, I don't know if that's any large number," she said.

"We do not know the exact cost savings because we would need to know how much food stamp money they would get if they did qualify," Bale said. "Since they did not qualify, we did not track how much they could have gotten."

The average household receiving food stamps has 2.1 members, which qualifies the household for $367 a month, according to federal statistics. Using that national average, Pennsylvania's asset test would have saved $17.6 million last year.

Whatever the value of asset testing, Hoffman said its complexity makes the procedure open to error. She offered the example of a Monroe County woman initially turned down for food stamps because she had sizable savings in an individual retirement account.

But that money, it turned out, didn't count as an asset because the woman would have been penalized for withdrawing it early, Hoffman said.

Even the burial plot question is confusing. Hoffman long thought that applicants had to track down a precise value for the plot. She later learned they can simply offer an estimate of its worth.

"I'd say that when the state initiated this asset test, it wasn't initiated with enough explication of the very complicated ways you have to determine eligibility," Hoffman said. "Most caseworkers aren't 100 percent versed in this."

State Sen. Pat Vance, R-Cumberland, chairwoman of the Public Health and Welfare Committee, said the asset test does not seem to be an inconvenience to many people, judging by the lack of complaints her office and other senators have received.

But Vance said she does not understand why the administration thought it needed an asset test in the first place because food stamps are a federal program. Public welfare agencies already are stretched thin, she said, and having staff manage and examine asset statements of applicants seems wasteful.

"Why are we putting an asset test on a federal program?" Vance asked. "It would seem like their time would be better spent on other things."

Bale said the asset test was needed because unqualified people were receiving benefits and the 4,000 rejected applications saved taxpayers money. It also comes at no extra cost to the state, she said, because Public Welfare already had instituted an asset test for Medicaid, a federal/state health care program for lower-income residents. A majority of food stamp applicants already have had their assets calculated by being part of Medicaid, Bale said.

State Sen. Shirley Kitchen, Democratic chairwoman of the Public Health and Welfare Committee, said the number of people, primarily elderly, coming into her Philadelphia office seeking help in obtaining food stamps are not sitting on nest eggs. They are sitting on a few thousand dollars, Kitchen said, as retirement savings or a rainy day fund toward major home improvement. Yet that money is interfering with their ability to obtain food stamps.

"They are trying to make ends meet," Kitchen said. "We are sending them to food cupboards."

Food stamps are a 74-year-old federal initiative for low-income families that dates to the Great Depression and was recently renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.