The Food Assistance Program provides Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards that can be used to buy groceries at supermarkets, grocery stores and some Farmers Markets. This dataset provides data on the number of households, recipients and cash assistance provided through the Food Assistance Program participation in Iowa by month and county starting in January 2011 and updated monthly.

Beginning January 2017, the method used to identify households is based on the following: 1. If one or more individuals receiving Food Assistance also receives FIP, the household is categorized as FA/FIP. 2. If no one receives FIP, but at least one individual also receives Medical Assistance, the household is categorized as FA/Medical Assistance. 3. If no one receives FIP or Medical Assistance, but at least one individual receives Healthy and Well Kids in Iowa or hawk-i benefits, the household is categorized as FA/hawk-i. 4. If no one receives FIP, Medical Assistance or hawk-i , the household is categorized as FA Only.

Changes have also been made to reflect more accurate identification of individuals. The same categories from above are used in identifying an individual's circumstances. Previously, the household category was assigned to all individuals of the Food Assistance household, regardless of individual status. This change in how individuals are categorized provides a more accurate count of individual categories.

Timing of when the report is run also changed starting January 2017. Reports were previously ran on the 1st, but changed to the 17th to better capture Food Assistance households that received benefits for the prior month. This may give the impression that caseloads have increased when in reality, under the previous approach, cases were missed.