Hypothesis

Statistically, I think that food stamp abuse and error is on the decline.

However, this is only reported cases of abuse, such as caseworkers attributing more credit to a card than necessary.  This does not include more small scale, harder to detect operations such as the resale of soda.

It has been rumored that soon pop will no longer be covered by an EBT card.  This, in effect, would prevent further abuse of the system in this particular way.  However, these transactions are difficult to investigate as pop is currently allowed, along with other non nutritional foods, to be purchased on EBT.  

Thus, I hypothesize that food stamp abuse rates will gradually decline statistically, but as long as soda is unmonitored on EBT cards, this form of abuse will persist.