New Hampshire will contend with a $15 million obligation to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits as early as next year, according to the state’s latest performance against a key metric.
States’ payment error rates represent a measure of how much they over- or underpay benefits to residents enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. Last year, the Trump administration’s budget reconciliation bill, H.R. 1, downshifted a majority of the costs of administering SNAP to states and instituted a tiered cost-sharing schema for benefits.
Never in the history of the food assistance program have states been on the hook for the cost of benefits. Beginning as early as October of 2027, states with error rates above 6% will be responsible for a portion of these costs, ranging from 5% to 15% depending on particular error rates.
New Hampshire’s 2025 error rate, released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture last week, was 8.85%, up from 7.57% the previous year. The state’s rate is still below the national average of 10.62%.
This places the Granite State in the middle cost-sharing tier, where states will be required to pay 10% of total SNAP benefits disbursed to their residents. Based on current enrollment, this sum may equal $15 million in New Hampshire, according to estimates by the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities.
“New Hampshire is working with federal partners to prepare for changes in SNAP funding while ensuring we preserve services for Granite Staters who need them,” said Jake Leon, director of communications at the Department of Health and Human Services. “DHHS has taken several steps to address the issues that lead to SNAP payment errors and continues to work proactively to reduce the SNAP payment error rate as quickly as possible.”
While the USDA administers the program on the federal level, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services does so at the state level.
Leon said the department is using automation to prevent mistakes, heightening reviews of case types prone to errors before they occur, targeting staff training and support, simplifying decision-making processes and promoting greater cross-team coordination.
DHHS will request funding for the state’s portion of SNAP benefits in the next biennial budget cycle, according to Leon.
Error rates are not a measure of fraud.
“We want there to be oversight. Good government means administering public programs accurately and efficiently. The fact that errors are identified demonstrates that oversight is working,” said Laura Milliken, executive director of food security nonprofit New Hampshire Hunger Solutions. “Unfortunately, the error rate is now pegged to penalties.”
Milliken said most payment errors arise from the complexity of SNAP’s eligibility rules, from changing household circumstances and from errors in administrative processing. In this way, error rates function as a necessary quality control measure.
In 2025, overpayment accounted for 6.15% of the state’s error rate, while underpayment accounted for 2.7%. The previous year, overpayment represented 4.52% and underpayment 3.05%.
Notwithstanding the state’s latest performance, New Hampshire had, in recent years, been trending toward minimizing its error rate. However, as states were afforded little time to implement abrupt changes to SNAP introduced in H.R.1, signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, Milliken believes increased mistakes were “pretty foreseeable.”
Barring an extension to the October 2027 deadline, this “blip,” in Milliken’s words, could disrupt the state’s bottom line. She fears it could jeopardize the program itself.
“We will be advocating for the state to find the dollars. We are advocating for Congress to delay implementing this part of H.R.1,” Milliken said. “There isn’t an alternative to the SNAP program. The charitable food system is totally overburdened already. If you take SNAP away from people, they don’t become unhungry. We have to grapple with this unless we want people to starve.”
