A new budget bill passed by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives supposedly lowers the age of dependents from 18 years old to seven, according to a rumor at the end of May 2025.
For example, a Facebook account shared on May 24, 2025, an image sarcastically asking seven-year-olds how they intended to support themselves (archived):
This post had amassed 1,000 reshares, but it was not the first time such a claim appeared. Three days before, an X account posted a video of Rep. Shontel Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, saying that 8, 9 and 10-year-old children would no longer be considered dependent children (archived):
The post had accumulated 1 million views and 15,000 likes as of this writing. Brown said:
My amendment would strike an especially harsh provision in this bill that is rooted in cruelty, not policy. This simple, straightforward amendment would strike the work requirement provision in this big, bad, ugly bill that lowers the age of what we call a dependent child from 18 to seven — from 18 years old to seven years old.
So I'm abundantly clear. We're saying that eight, nine and 10 year olds are no longer considered dependent children. Where did this come from? Why is this necessary? Since when is a first-grader not a dependent child, preventing families with children as young as seven from losing food assistance? That is what we're debating here.
Other accounts on X spread the same video and claim. The video also appeared on Facebook. Further, Snopes readers sent emails seeking confirmation of the rumors.
Many people took it to mean that this alleged change affected the definition of "dependent" as it is generally understood, which is to say children under the age of 18 whom adults support financially. This definition often varies. For example, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service outlines as follows:
Qualifying child
To qualify as a dependent, a child must also pass these tests:
- Relationship: Be your son, daughter, stepchild, eligible foster child, brother, sister, half-sister or -brother, stepbrother, stepsister, adopted child or the child of one of these
- Age: Be under age 19 or under 24 if a full-time student, or any age if permanently and totally disabled
- Residency: Live with you for more than half the year, with some exceptions
- Support: Get more than half their financial support from you
- Joint return: Not file as married filing jointly unless only to claim a refund of taxes paid or withheld
As we will see, however, while the House Republicans' so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" did change the age of dependents from under 18 to under 7, it was solely in the context of work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — not across the board. Still, such a change would affect a large number of households with children who depend on this program for access to food.
What the new law would do
Under current law, SNAP includes both general work requirements and work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents. All adults who are able to work between the ages of 18 and 59 are required to work in order to receive food assistance, with some exceptions. One such exception exempts adults responsible for the care of a child under six years old from general work requirements.
Able-bodied adults without dependents must follow general work requirements and work requirements that apply specifically to them. The latter are more stringent, but such adults can be exempted from these requirements if they live in a household with a child who is younger than 18. Under the law, the government cannot limit access to food assistance for such adults to only three months unless they comply with the work requirements. This system allows children under 18 to access food.
"The current policy, enacted in the 1996 Welfare Act, was designed to avoid taking food from any children," David Super, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Economics at the Georgetown University Law Center, wrote in an email. "Therefore, it does not time-limit SNAP benefits to any households with children."
The new bill targets this system. Indeed, this provision would only exempt such adults if they live with a child who is younger than 7.
With the new bill, "in a family of four with two adults and two children age seven or above, the family would receive enough food assistance to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet for only their first three months on the program," Super said. "After that, the allotment would be cut 45% unless at least one of the adults could document enough hours of work."
Impact of the new law
According to an analysis by the Urban Institute, the proposed changes would impact a large number of households with children. "1.2 million families with 3.6 million people, including 1.5 million children, would receive lower benefits because a family member does not meet the work requirement and can no longer be counted as eligible for SNAP," authors Laura Wheaton and Linda Giannarelli wrote in the report.
Further, Super says it can be difficult to prove hours of work in order to maintain SNAP benefits even with the current rules. "Many work in unstable jobs with inconsistent hours and many employers will not cooperate with government agencies," he wrote. The work requirement rule "simply disqualifies people who cannot find jobs, people whose employers will not consistently give them enough hours, people whose employers are unwilling to verify their hours (perhaps because the employer is engaged in tax avoidance), and those who cannot make it through the human services office bureaucracy every month to prove their hours."
Super adds that another consequence of such a change would increase the financial burden for states. "The House bill would dramatically increase states' costs for the program, likely causing big reductions in the staffing of already threadbare human services offices," he said. Understaffing may also lead to more difficulty in proving that individuals qualify for SNAP.
The new budget bill had yet to go through the U.S. Senate at the time of this writing.