When you turn thirteen or fourteen years old, all kinds of things you used to accept as normal become potentially embarrassing. I know I was around that age when I started to notice the anxious look on my mother’s face when she passed our family’s SNAP card — the acronym stands for Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or what’s popularly known as “food stamps” — to the cashier at the grocery store. The anxiety of not always having food in the fridge was doubled by the potential shame of being “caught” using the card.

There is an obvious material toll to experiencing poverty. There’s a psychological one as well.

I thought about that when the Trump administration announced a policy change that would kick 3.1 million people off of SNAP as part of a new push for “efficiency” in the program.