Food Hardship Rate Still Alarmingly High In DC, As In Almost All States

For the last year and a half, the Food Research and Action Center has been issuing periodic reports on food hardship in the U.S. Its latest update indicates that food hardship rates remain alarmingly high, though the national rate has dropped a bit since the July 2008-9 year.

This is also true for the District of Columbia. But according to FRAC, neither the national nor the District’s year-over-year declines are big enough to be statistically significant.

As I wrote in heralding FRAC’s first report, food hardship is relatively equivalent to what the U.S. Department of Agriculture terms “food insecurity.”

A household is counted as experiencing food hardship if a member answers in the affirmative when asked, “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you and your family needed?”.

During the period January-June 2010:

• More than 20% of responding households in 16 states had experienced food hardship.
• Only five states had food hardship rates under 15% and only one state (North Dakota) a single-digit rate.
• The rate for the District was nearly 18.3% — or well over one in every six households. As with the latest USDA figures, this puts the District midway between the highest and lowest state rates.

Comparing July-June figures for 2008 and 2009, FRAC finds that food hardship rates in five states increased enough to be statistically significant. The same number of states had statistically significant decreases.

So the best that can be said is that food hardship rates haven’t risen as much as one might expect, given the persistently high unemployment rate and continuing increases in both the rate and raw number of people in poverty.

What will happen in the upcoming year is an open question.

As FRAC President Jim Weill observes, “states will be facing many fiscal challenges,” as will the District. They surely can’t look to Congress for another round of temporary assistance.

Not with the new Republican House leadership promising $100 billion in spending cuts — some $50-$60 billion more than their Senate counterparts achieved by blocking a Fiscal Year 2011 budget. Not with their insistence that the stimulus spending in the economic recovery act “failed.”

Many economists are forecasting unemployment rates at or over 9% through 2011. Though many jobless workers will remain eligible for extended unemployment benefits, they’ll be getting less.

Then perhaps nothing. The President’s Council of Economic Advisers reportedly expects an additional 4 million to exceed the maximum weeks they’re entitled to.

Still, there are things that states and the District can do to address food hardship. As FRAC elsewhere suggests, they can make getting foods stamps easier and quicker while also doing a better job with outreach.

They can take advantage of provisions in the reauthorized Child Nutrition Act that expand opportunities to feed low-income children in and after school.

They can do something about low participation rates in subsidized summer meal programs — or in the District’s case, a relatively high rate that’s shrinking.

Perhaps they can also retool their workforce development programs to help more jobless workers secure stable living-wage employment.

Mayor Vincent Gray made this a keynote of his campaign. Now that he’s in office, let’s see what he and his new appointees do. From what I’ve heard, they could do quite a lot without a lot more spending.

That would be good for our economy and for thousands of our hungry neighbors too.

Food Security Report Shows Federal Nutrition Programs Working, But Not Well Enough

The recent U.S. Department of Agriculture household food security report confirms what we were already quite sure of. The number of food insecure households increased again last year. These are households that, at some point during the year, couldn’t afford to buy enough food for all members to have “active healthy lives.”

The increase wasn’t all that great — 17.4 million households, as compared to 17 million in 2008. But both years’ food insecurity rates were the highest USDA had found since it started doing nationally-representative surveys in 1995.

Similarly, the number of families that were very food insecure inched up a bit — from 6.7 million to 6.8 million. In other words, during the last two years, about a third of all food insecure families had such limited resources that at least one member sometimes had to cut back on the size of his/her meals or skip some altogether.

A breakdown of the household figures tells us that more than 50 million people — 16.6% of the population — suffered food insecurity last year. For children, the rate was an alarming 23.2%. That’s 17.2 million children at risk of hunger.

While this is bad news, it could have been much worse, given the sharp rise in the unemployment rate — up from 7.4% at the end of 2008 to 10% by the end of 2009.

As many have observed, the food stamp program seems to be serving its safety net function, with participation continuously rising to new record levels.

On the other hand, the federal nutrition assistance programs aren’t reaching nearly as many low-income households as they should. According to the Food Research and Action Center, only about two-thirds of eligible people are enrolled in the food stamp program.

During the 2008-9 school year, fewer than half the children poor enough to qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch also got free or reduced-price breakfasts at their school. Figures for federally-subsidized summer meal programs are even worse.

Nor apparently are the benefits the major programs offer sufficient. About 35% of food insecure households and 56% of very food insecure households received food stamps. By definition, they still couldn’t consistently afford to keep enough food on the table.

Turning to the District, the figures we get are less accurate because USDA uses three-year averages to compensate for small state-level samples. The latest figures thus minimize the impacts of the recession.

With that caveat, 12.9% of D.C. households were food insecure, putting the District below the national rate and smack dab in the middle of a state-by-state ranking.

Somewhat less than a third of these households (4.5%) were very food insecure. On this measure, the District ranks lower than 36 states. So, as DC Hunger Solutions says, local efforts may be paying off.

We don’t know how many of the food insecure households were receiving food stamps during the period covered by the USDA average. What we do know is that, beginning in April 2009, those that did began receiving higher-than-usual food stamp benefits due to the nationwide 13.6% maximum boost provided by the economic recovery act.

Now the duration of the boost has been scaled back — first to help pay for some additional fiscal relief to the states and again when the House adopted the Senate’s version of the reauthorized Child Nutrition Act. The Congressional Research Services estimates the loss when the boost ends at $10 to $15 per person per month.

Look for a bigger uptick in food insecurity when that happens, both nationwide and here in the District.

New Report Finds Hunger Nationwide–And Rampant Among DC Families With Children

Every year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issues a report on food (in)security in the U.S. It tells us some important things. But it’s limited. The data are quite old by the time the report is issued. And the number of households surveyed is too small to permit much by way of reliable geographic breakouts.

Now the Food Research and Action Center has issued a first-ever detailed, up-to-date report on food hardship “in every corner of the U.S.” Food hardship here is roughly equivalent to USDA’s food insecurity–specifically, an affirmative response to the question, “Have there been times in the past twelve months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?”

The FRAC data come from a survey Gallop has been conducting every day since the beginning of January 2008. They’re current as of December 2009. And they reflect responses by more than 530,000 people (12 times as many as in the survey used for USDA’s latest report).

With such a large data set, FRAC has been able to provide reasonably reliable food hardship rates by calendar quarter, state, major metropolitan statistical area and Congressional district. As a political matter, the last may be most important because it puts the problem of hunger into the home base of virtually every member of Congress.

Here are some big-picture findings:

• Food hardship rose in 2008–from 16.3% in the first quarter to 19.5% in the fourth quarter.* Of course, the big uptick here is linked to the rising unemployment rate. But the large increase in “food at home” prices was also a factor.
• The food hardship rate declined somewhat in 2009, ending in the fourth quarter at 18.5%. FRAC attributes this in part to a drop in “food at home” prices, but mostly to other factors that offset the still-rising unemployment rate–increases in food stamp benefits, other provisions in the economic recovery act, policy changes that broadened food stamp eligibility and increased participation in all the major federal nutrition programs. In short, mostly the workings of the safety net.
• Food hardship was a greater problem for households with children than for those without. In 2009, 24.1% of the former experienced food hardship, as compared to 14.9% of the latter.
• Food hardship was a problem in every state. In 2009, the rate was over 10% in every state, over 15% in 43 states and over 20% in 17 states. For households with children, the 2008-9 rate was over 15% in every state and over 20% in 40 states.
• Food hardship was also a problem in almost every Congressional district. The 2008-9 food hardship rate was under 10% in only 23 of the country’s 436 Congressional districts and at least 15% in 311 districts.

And what about the District of Columbia?

• In 2009, the District’s overall food hardship rate was 20.8%–higher than in all but 14 states.
• Both the District’s food hardship rate and its relative ranking worsened last year. In 2008, the overall rate was 17.6%–lower than all but 20 states.
• The District had a higher rate of food hardship among families with children than any state–a shocking 40.8%. The highest ranking state was Mississippi, with 33.8%.

I don’t know what to say about figures like these that hasn’t been said before and better. So I’ll borrow from Congressman James McGovern (D-MA), co-chair of the Congressional Hunger Caucus. “Hunger is a political condition.”

We have the wealth to eliminate hunger. We’ve got a host of studies, pilot projects, best practices and proposals that tell us how to go about it. We know (or ought to know) that investments in reducing hunger more than pay for themselves–in lower health care, education and welfare costs and ultimately in greater economic productivity.

But do we have the political will to deal with food hardship now?

President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget proposed $10 billion over 10 years to strengthen the Child Nutrition Act–a down payment on his commitment to ending child hunger by 2015. But we haven’t heard much about this lately–or any hint that the food stamp increase in the economic recovery act should be extended.

The jobs creation bill the House passed will leave what the New York Times calls “a crater in the economy where the job market used to be.” And the Senate is taking its own sweet time with something even smaller.

Here in the District, we see budget cuts that have undermined the delivery of food stamps and other benefits–and possibly more cuts on the horizon. Still no word about when the Income Maintenance Administration will make the Food Stamp Expansion Act a reality.

So I’m not hopeful. But I hope to be proved wrong.

* Both these figures are higher than what USDA reported for food insecure households (14.6%).

Hunger Experts Say the Top Remedy Is Jobs

Catching up on things in my files…

A mid-December article in the Washington Post explores “the silent epidemic” of child hunger. Bottom line is that the problem is complex and unlikely to be solved by simply putting more money into food assistance programs.

This took me back to a webinar on the struggle against hunger in America. Anyone who’s been following the news knows the news wasn’t good.

• Food banks in Feeding America’s network reporting an average of 30% more requests for emergency food assistance since last year.
• An unprecedented one-year jump in the number of people who are food insecure–from 36.2 million in 2007 to more than 49 million in 2008.
• Nearly 37.2 million people receiving food stamps in September–almost 15.6% more than in September 2007.
• Hunger and/or dietary deficiencies among one in four of the children cared for by pediatricians in the Children’s HealthWatch network.

And more …

But, of course, we already knew that many more households are struggling with hunger–and many more children at high risk of life-long consequences. Every new report is a shocker, but not a surprise.

The surprise, for me, was what the panelists said should be done. As you’d expect, they noted needs to improve and expand federal nutrition programs. But their A-number 1 remedy was action to address the jobs crisis.

Putting people back to work will surely reduce food hardship. But just creating jobs won’t be enough. We’ll continue seeing dire figures like those above unless we make sure that those who’ve been hit hardest by the labor market contraction can find living wage jobs–a challenge for many of them even before the recession set in.