As a result, in one of the richest countries that has ever existed, about 15 percent of the population faces down bare cupboards and empty refrigerators on a routine basis. That fact alone meets any reasonable definition of the word “crisis,” but it is rarely treated like one. In a lot of states, benign neglect is the most that hungry Americans can expect from their government. What they get instead is usually worse: new restrictions on food-stamp eligibility, in the form of a reimposition of work requirements, mandatory drug testing, and so on.

The cumulative effect of those state-level decisions—combined with recent cuts to the food-stamp program on the federal level—has been a sharp decline in the number of claimants, an effect that far outstrips whatever meager gains have been made in the fight against food insecurity. Over the course of a single month in the first half of 2016, more than a quarter of a million people dropped out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the official name for the food-stamps system. That was the sharpest month-long fall in SNAP participation in a decade.

The main reason for the decline is some states’ new work requirements, according to Lisa Davis, the senior vice president of government relations at the national food-bank network Feeding America. “Part of it is due to the fact that the economy is recovering, but unfortunately another big part of it is occurring in the states [that] reinstituted that three-month time limit for ABAWDs,” said Davis, using an acronym for “able-bodied adult without dependents.” Under federal law, ABAWDs can only receive three months’ worth of SNAP benefits every three years before they get cut off. In order to receive any more, they must either find employment or enter a job training program that meets federal requirements. When unemployment is high and job training is scarce, states have the option of waiving those work requirements.

Most governors took advantage of that escape clause in the years following the financial crisis. As recently as the first quarter of this year, the USDA, which oversees food-stamp programs, had granted full waivers to 29 states, plus the District of Columbia, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. But within months, the number of states opting into full waivers had plummeted to eight. The result was an immediate and dramatic decline in nationwide food-stamp rolls. “The reinstatement of the time limit is probably the single most significant issue in the national social safety net happening this year," said Davis.

Some state governments haven’t been satisfied with only reimposing work requirements. Over the past year, Wisconsin started requiring that some food-stamp applicants submit to a drug test, Missouri imposed a rule limiting the duration of residents’ enrollment in the program to no longer than four years, and Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, threatened to stop administering SNAP entirely.