Close to 750,000 older adults could lose federal food assistance under the new deal to lift the nation’s debt ceiling.

The latest legislation expands work requirements for childless older adults ages 50 to 54 receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, provide low-income individuals and families with monthly funds for food purchases.

But research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ (CBPP) shows that the “existing, failed SNAP work-reporting requirement” would do more harm than good. The think tank found that SNAP’s current work-reporting requirement does not increase employment chances or earnings.

“Older adults are more likely to face age-related discrimination in the labor market, to no longer be able to perform the types of jobs they did when they were younger,” the report said.

Under current law, adults aged 18-49 with no dependents are eligible to receive SNAP benefits if they can prove existing employment or participation in a job training program for 20 hours per week. Some individuals are exempt from SNAP’s work-reporting requirement if they have a work-limiting disability like a pregnancy or a physical disability that prevents them from working.

Otherwise, they would only qualify for three months’ worth of benefits over a span of three years.

Additional research backs up CBPP’s findings. The American Economic Association Journal found the current work-reporting requirement cut SNAP participation by more than 50 percent among those who need it the most; individuals who “often have very low incomes, and the loss of SNAP benefits significantly harms their ability to meet their basic needs.”

Critics find the expansion of this work-requirement to childless older adults “upsetting.”

“You’re not going to balance the budget, much less pay down the debt, through these kinds of changes,” said Ed Bolen, CBPP’s director of SNAP state strategies, to CNBC. “On the other hand, you’re going to affect up to 750,000 low-income older Americans who need food assistance.”

SNAP’s expansion will be implemented 90 days following the enactment of the law, which was signed over the weekend. Fifty-year-olds will be the first subjected to the work-reporting requirement.

On October 1, it will expand to include 51 and 52-year-olds. And beginning October 1, 2024, individuals aged 53 to 54 will also be subject to this requirement.

The work-reporting requirement will remain effective until October 1, 2030.

Ellen Vollinger, the SNAP director for the Food Research and Action Center, thinks this will lead to further food hardship. “It doesn’t do anything to improve people’s employability,” Vollinger said to NPR. “It’s just going to take food away from people that are unable to meet the documented requirements.”

These findings have precedent, too. Several investigations, assessments and research in the past decade have shown many people whose SNAP benefits are taken away under existing food assistance policy, should have been exempt but were not properly screened for work-limiting health conditions or other exemptions.