Expert Report Indicates Need for Larger Food Stamp Benefits

SNAP (the food stamp program) is protected from the across-the-board cuts that will soon kick in. But benefits will be cut anyway, come November, because Congress has twice raided the funds it provided for a temporary boost.

A family of three will lose at least $20 a month, according to new estimates by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Still-eligible families would lose considerably more under the Farm Bills the House Agriculture Committee and the full Senate passed last year.

Yet we now have new, credible evidence that food stamp benefits are already too low for a great many participating families. This, at any rate, is a reasonable inference from an analysis jointly produced by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.

The core of the problem is the assumptions built into the Thrifty Food Plan — the collection of market baskets that provide the basis for setting food stamp benefits.

Basically, the TFP assumes that families will make many of their meals from scratch, using low-cost, processed ingredients — a stew of potatoes, carrots and cut up chuck roast, for example, or chili made from slow-cooked dried beans.

In other words, someone in the family will have plenty of time to go grocery shopping, with pauses and backtracks for price comparisons, and the time to peel, chop, braise, bake, etc.

The family will live relatively near a full-service grocery store. And it will have the transportation to get there — and home with bags full of groceries.

It will also live in an area where food costs are relatively low, since we know from previous studies that the bill for a TFP-based food selection in a high-cost city far exceeds the maximum food stamp benefit.

And — something the IOM panel doesn’t mention — the family will have a good-sized refrigerator with ample freezer space. We see this assumption in the recipes and tips the U.S. Department of Agriculture has published for “healthy, thrifty meals.”

The IOM panel concludes that the from-scratch assumption is “out of synch with the practices of most households today.” Surely true for the 62% of food stamp households with children who’ve got at least one working member.

The IOM panel doesn’t come to such firm conclusions about the other assumptions. It merely identifies factors USDA should examine in determining whether food stamp allotments are adequate.

This is what USDA asked for. What it will do with the answer remains to be seen.

What our federal policymakers should do seems to me obvious enough. Beating a dead horse here, I know, but they should first and foremost give up the notion of reducing the deficit by cutting food stamp benefits.

Though the recession and lingering labor market ills have driven SNAP spending upward, it’s expected to drop to nearly the same share of GDP — a common measure of federal spending –as it represented in 2007.

The total cost of our primary nutrition safety net would then be somewhere around one-third of one percent of the value of everything our economy produces.

Beyond this, our policymakers ought finally to come to grips with the fact that the TFP doesn’t provide a suitable basis for determining food stamp benefits.

We’ve got scads of evidence that a large number of recipients can’t stretch them till the end of the month — let alone purchase the foods they’d need for a healthful diet.

A fairly recent study for USDA found that food stamp households had used, on average, 90% of their monthly benefits by the end of the third week — this despite the boost that’s due to expire.

The latest reported results of an annual survey conducted for the agency show that nearly half of households that received food stamp benefits throughout 2011 experienced food insecurity, i.e., were at risk of hunger or even sometimes didn’t have enough food for everyone because they couldn’t afford it.

No wonder that, as Feeding America has reported, 58% of the people who regularly or recurrently visited the food pantries in its network were food stamp recipients.

The Food Research and Action Center has repeatedly recommended that food stamp benefits be based on USDA’s Low-Cost Food Plan instead of the TFP — for reasons fully explained in a report it issued last December.

FRAC offers some additional recommendations in a statement triggered by the IOM report, e.g., a change in the outdated assumption that eligible households can spend 30% of their own income to supplement their benefits.

Congress will presumably again address the need for a new Farm Bill this year. So it’s got an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and create a food stamp program that will, at long last, end hunger and malnutrition in this country.

At the very least, it should do no further harm. Doesn’t seem like a lot to ask, but in this political environment, it is.

DC Still #1 for Summer Meals, But Leaving More Kids at Risk of Hunger

The Food Research and Action Center’s latest summer meals report delivers sad news — both for the nation as a whole and for the District of Columbia.

Downward Trend Nationwide

Last July, federally-subsidized summer meal programs served only 14.6% of children whose families were poor enough for them to have gotten free or reduced-price lunches during the school year.

This means that as many as 16.4 million children were at risk of hunger last summer, even during the month that’s generally the peak for summer meal programs.

The latest participation rate continues a five-year downward trend.

Summer meal programs served 15.1% of low-income children in July 2010 — 24,000 more than last July. In July 2006, well before the recession set in, they served 17.7%.

The recession then is part of the story. As family incomes dropped, more and more children became eligible for free or reduced-price school meals.

Summer meal programs would have had to expand a lot to serve the same percent — enough, FRAC’s reports indicate, to serve over 2.8 million more children than during the 2006-7 school year.

At the same time, however, state and local budget constraints led school districts to reduce or altogether eliminate their summer programs — one of the main sources of federally-subsidized free summer meals.

The loss of children served by these programs more than offset increases in summer meal programs sponsored by nonprofits and other entities eligible for subsidies under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Food Service Program.

DC Trends Downward Too

The District has been out in front of any state for as long as FRAC has been reporting summer meal participation figures — and way out in front since 2004.

But its recent participation rates generally mirror the nationwide trend.

Last July, local programs served 73.5% of low-income children who’d benefited from its free and reduced-price school meals. Far better than New Mexico — the highest-ranked state — which served 31.2%.

But in July 2010, summer meal programs in D.C. reached 80.2% of low-income children, so defined — 2,245 more than last summer.

I’d hopefully written that the 2010 rate seemed to signal a turnaround, though the percent increase over 2009 was small.

Now it seems that the uptick was a blip — not a sign that the District was on its way to restoring its earlier extraordinarily high participation rates.

Back in 2007, the District’s summer meal programs were serving 95.9% of children who’d received free or reduced-price school lunches.

And even the following summer, with the recession underway, the program served 88.8%.

As I remarked earlier, we need to consider the base for the participation rate, i.e., the number of children who received free or reduced-price lunches during the prior school year.

The base for the District has increased during each of the past three school years. So local summer meal programs as a whole could have sustained the same participation rate only by serving more children.

This, however, doesn’t explain the marked 6.7% drop between 2010 and 2011 because, according to the FRAC report, only 125 more children received free or reduced-price lunches during the 2010-11 school year.

I doubt lack of access explains it either. Last summer, meals were available at more than 250 sites and in every ward. Wards 7 and 8, where presumably need was highest, had 64 sites between them.

We Need to Do Better

Whatever the reasons, we’ve got to hope for a real turnaround — here in the District and in the 18 states where participation rates also dropped. Hope as well for continuing progress in the 32 states that managed to raise their rates.

Because, as the titles of FRAC’s annual reports say, hunger doesn’t take a vacation.

We know, in fact, that it increases during summer months in low-income families with children — presumably because parents have to stretch their food stamps and/or budgets to feed their kids meals that schools provide during the rest of the year.

We also know that hunger increases less in states that have relatively high summer meal participation rates.

Need I add that we know hunger is very bad for kids? Of course not.

Food Hardship Rate Rises Nationwide, Drops in DC

The latest food hardship report from the Food Research and Action Center delivers some bad news for the nation as a whole and some moderately good news for the District of Columbia.

Food Hardship Nationwide

Nationwide, the food hardship rate increased somewhat in 2011, hitting 18.6% of households surveyed. This means that nearly one in five at some point during the year didn’t have enough money to buy the food the family needed.

The annual rate masks the extent of the upward trend. The food hardship rate during the first quarter of the year was 17.9%. By the fourth quarter, it had risen to 19.4%.

Ongoing high unemployment and underemployment rates account for part of the increase, FRAC says. But rising food prices and the freeze in food stamp benefit increases were also factors.

Costs of the items in the Thrifty Food Plan  market baskets rose 6.2% during 2011. That would ordinarily lead to an increase in food stamp benefits.

But when the Recovery Act boosted the benefits, it also suspended the annual food cost adjustments. Food stamps thus lost 6.2% of their purchasing power last year, though they were still worth more than they would have been without the boost.

Food Hardship in the District

Here in the District, the food hardship rate dropped from 18.9% in 2010 to 16.5% in 2011.

Last year, the District was right in the middle of FRAC’s state rankings. Now it’s slightly below the middle. Twenty-seven states had higher food hardship rates. In 17 of them, rates were at or above 20%.

As I’ve remarked before, the state ranking is, for the District, something of an apples to oranges comparison, since the District is only a city, notwithstanding its various state-like functions.

Fortunately, FRAC also provides food hardship rates for Congressional districts — these reflecting two-year averages to compensate for relatively small survey samples.

Here the District is again somewhat below the median, with a ranking of 295, based on a two-year average of 15.8%.

Nothing to stand up and cheer about. But a whole lot better than the 33.3% in the top-ranking district, which (in gerrymandered fashion) embraces the northern and eastern parts of Houston.

Policy Implications

So what’s the takeaway? Nothing new, but nonetheless important.

It’s crucial, FRAC says, to grow the economy in a way that provides full-time jobs at decent wages. At the same time, we need to strengthen income supports, e.g., unemployment insurance, low-income tax credits and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Federal nutrition programs must be strengthened as well so that they reach more households in need and “with more robust benefits.”

For the long term, the latter would involve changing the basis for calculating food stamp benefits — a FRAC recommendation I’ve been harping on for some time.

More immediately, however, Congress has a Fiscal Year 2013 budget to pass.

The President has again recommended that it restore the months it shaved off the boost to help pay for the reauthorized Child Nutrition Act.

Also (again) that it temporarily suspend the time limit that now jeopardizes food stamp benefits for many poor able-bodied adults without dependents.

He proposes modest increases for some key child nutrition programs, including WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children).

He’s also proposing a bit more for TEFAP (the Emergency Food Assistance Program) — perhaps enough to sustain, at the current level, the stream  food products that flow to our country’s severely stressed pantries and soup kitchens.

But, as FRAC tactfully observes, “some in Congress” are proposing reductions in federal nutrition programs.

We’re told to expect a House budget plan much like last year’s. That would mean, among other things, a food stamp block grant structured to cut federal spending for the program by some $127 billion over the first ten years.

Some other programs — WIC and TEFAP, for example — would be slated for cuts. They’re doubly vulnerable, since they’re not protected from the across-the-board cuts that will kick in next January.

No doubt we’ve got to grapple with the projected long-term deficit. And the short-term prospects for tax revenues are fair to middlin’.

But “even in difficult times,” FRAC says, “we have the resources to eliminate hunger for everyone.” We could, in fact, gain at least $167.5 billion a year if we did.

Knowing this, the new food hardship figures should prompt second thoughts by our decision-makers — even those safety-net-slashing “some in Congress.”

Food Stamp Benefits Will Drop 10 Percent If Congress Doesn’t Undo Cuts

As many of you probably know, the Recovery Act increased the maximum food stamp benefit by 13.6%. For a family of four, this has meant as much as $80 a month more for groceries.

The boost was originally supposed to last until the increase was no greater than the cumulative annual increases in food price inflation. That was expected to happen no sooner than some time late in 2018.

Then came the need to extend two expiring parts of the Recovery Act that provided states with some urgently-needed fiscal relief. The bill couldn’t get through the Senate without a pay-for, i.e., some budget changes that would fully offset the costs.

The Democratic leadership ultimately decided to offset nearly half the costs by moving the end date for the food stamp boost back to April 2014.

Next things you know, there was a need to pay for the reauthorized Child Nutrition Act. And the Senate decided again to tap food stamp benefits. This time it lopped five months off the already-foreshortened boost.

The President’s proposed budget for this fiscal year would have put the five months back. But his budget was effectively dead on arrival in Congress.

So as things stand now, food stamp benefits will revert to what they’d have been if adjusted only for inflation in November 2013.

The Congressional Research Service estimates the initial per person loss at somewhere between $10 and $15 a month — an average of about 10%.

This might not seem like a lot. But as I’ve written before, food stamp benefits are egregiously low, even with the boost.

We’ve got new evidence from the U.S. Department of Agriculture itself.

In 2010, it reports, 41.5% of households that got food stamp benefits had “very low food security.” This means that at least one member of the household sometimes had to skimp on meals or skip them altogether because there wasn’t enough money for food.

Now low-income families may have to get along on considerably less. And our anemic economy may lose the biggest bang-for-the-buck stimulus we’ve got.

The Food Research and Action Center has launched a grassroots campaign to get the cut-off months restored, along with a now-expired suspension of a targeted time limit on food stamp benefits.

It has an online letter we can send to the President asking him to restore the two Recovery Act measures as part of his proposed Fiscal Year 2013 budget.

It also encourages us to weigh in with our Members of Congress.

Not much use if we live in the District of Columbia. But we disenfranchised souls can still do our bit by passing the word along to friends and relatives who live anywhere else in the U.S.