Recently there has been a flurry of news stories reporting that the number of Food Stamp recipients may soon hit a historic high of 28 million persons. This is interpreted as evidence of a calamitous “depression” in America entailing widespread suffering. These reports are foolish.

While the Food Stamp rolls may reach a record high later this year, this mainly due to three factors. The first is population growth. The American population has increased by some 40% over the last three decades. As a share of total population, Food Stamp recipients remain well below previous highs.

Second, as a safety net program, Food Stamps is intended to be partially cyclical in operation; it is designed to allow enrollments to spike upward whenever the economy slows. The fact that Food Stamp participation is rising during the current economic slowdown merely shows that program is operating as intended.

Third, federal and state governments have aggressively sought to increase enrollments in Food Stamps for the last seven years. Eligibility standards have been loosened; admission procedures have been made user friendly; Food Stamp offices have been kept open during the evening to make it easier for working families to enroll, and the government has undertaken extensive marketing and outreach activities designed to encourage all eligible persons to apply for aid. These actions have added millions to the rolls.

In reality, there has been a general upward trend in the number Food Stamps recipients since the program was created in 1969. The main exception to this upward trend occurred during welfare reform in the mid-1990s. Welfare reform established work requirements in the closely related Aid to Families in Dependent Children program, leading a surge in employment and a drop in AFDC caseload of more than 60%. Since most AFDC families were jointly enrolled in Food Stamps, the precipitous decline in AFDC caseload also led to a steep fall in the Food Stamp use.

The left responded to this drop angrily, arguing that most of the decrease in Food Stamp participation was not required by law and urging the government to re-enroll as many individuals as possible. The Bush administration acquiesced to these demands and has undertaken the extensive outreach activities described above for most of Mr. Bush’s tenure in office.

As a result Food Stamp caseloads have rebounded to nearly pre-reform levels. It’s ironic that the increase in Food Stamp participation demanded by the left for a decade is now being spun into sign of governmental and economic failure.

The recent Food Stamp stories also feed off the idea that most of the 36 million Americans who the government defines as “poor” face ongoing, serious material deprivation.

The facts show otherwise. According to the government’s own data, nearly two-thirds of “poor” households have satellite or cable television. Nine out of 10 have microwave ovens and 80% have air conditioning. Nearly three-quarters own a car and almost a third own two or more cars. For decades government data have shown that more than 40% of the poor own their own homes, typically a three bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths.

On average, poor children have the same high levels of protein, vitamin, and mineral consumption as upper middle class kids. Only 1.5% of the poor report they “often” did not have enough food to eat during the last four months, although another 6% state this “sometimes” happened.

Overall, the poor face the same major food-related problem as the rest of America: roughly two-thirds of poor adults are overweight or obese. Some argue that poverty causes this obesity, but in reality, the overweight and obesity rates for the poor and non-poor are similar. Poor persons are overweight for the same reasons the middle class is overweight, they eat too much, exercise too little, and spend far too much time watching cable TV.

Moreover, there is recent evidence that participation in the Food Stamp program actually has the unintended side effect of increasing obesity; low income women who receive Food Stamps are substantially more likely to be obese than are low income women who do not receive stamps. One fix to this problem might be to prohibit the use of Food Stamps to purchase junk food.

The sad fact is that Food Stamps is a relict, a fossil welfare program which has remained largely unchanged since its inception in the 1960s. The problem is not high Food Stamp caseloads but the fact that Food Stamps dispenses old style welfare handouts that reward non-work and penalize marriage.

Food Stamps should be reformed in the same way the AFDC program was: the penalties against marriage should be removed and able-bodied, idle recipients should be required to take a job. If a job cannot be found, recipients should be required prepare for work or perform community service. Similar reforms of AFDC caused an unprecedented surge in employment and a dramatic drop in child poverty. Reform of Food Stamps would produce the same results.

Mr. Rector is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.