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Now
"The Average Food Stamp Application
is 12 Pages, the Federal Firearm Application is Two Pages"
Hungry
for the Holidays
By ELIZABETH SCHULTE
When the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) released its annual survey on hunger in the U.S. this
November, something was missing. The word "hunger."
The government decided to purge
the word from this year's Household Food Security survey. Why?
Because, officials said, it is not a "scientifically accurate"
term.
The term "food insecure
with hunger"--the USDA's previous designation for people
who suffered the most from lack of food--has been changed to
"very low food security." "It seems that 'hungry'
means different things to different people," said sociologist
Mark Nord, one of the main authors of the USDA survey.
Despite what the USDA may think,
"hunger" is something everyone can understand. "We
feel that this really diminishes what millions of Americans face
every year, which is the honest lack of food or resources to
access food in order to lead a healthy productive life,"
Halley Aldeen, director of research and analysis at the national
food bank network America's Second Harvest, said in an interview.
"We really do want the
word hunger restored to the report. We don't want to diminish
the condition that millions of Americans suffer from," she
said. "We know that 25 million Americans rely on our food
assistance network, and no matter what others choose to call
it, they are hungry."
Jim Weill, president of the
Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), agrees that the term
change does a disservice to the millions of people in the U.S.
who go hungry every year.
"It's like the government
announcing it would no longer talk about 'uninsured people,'
but 'people with reduced health care access,'" he says.
"It's replacing a phrase which has emotional punch for people
with one that's drained of any power."
All the clinical terminology
in the world can't change the fact that, according to the USDA
report, more than 35 million people were living in households
that are "food insecure." That means 12 percent of
the U.S. population didn't get enough to eat for at least part
of last year.
According to the report, things
got even worse for those who are worst off. The number of people
in the USDA's "very low food security" category--households
in which "the food intake of some household members was
reduced and their normal eating patterns were disrupted"--rose
in 2005 to 10.8 million.
Hunger rates were higher for
Black households (22.4 percent) and Hispanic households (17.9
percent) than the national average.
* *
*
IN SPITE of the Bush administration's
claim that the economy is strong, food pantries and soup kitchens
report being stretched to the breaking point.
In Battle Creek, Mich., the
Food Bank of South Central Michigan is using leftover food from
restaurants to fill the gap between the needs of hungry people
and what corporate and private donations will buy. "This
is what we call 'deep diving,'" Teresa Osborne, who leads
the food bank's donor and community relations program, told the
Chicago Tribune, describing collecting discarded food
from local restaurants.
At the same time as the need
has increased, federal food assistance to pantries, in the form
of commodities like milk products and canned goods, is down about
55 percent since 2001.
Anne Lipsey, executive director
of Loaves & Fishes, a food distributor and referral agency
in Kalamazoo, Mich., said requests for food are increasing at
a rate of as much as 15 percent a year. With about 30 percent
of Kalamazoo residents living below the federal poverty line,
"[w]e're seeing more adult-only households, a complex and
multigenerational coming together of people, for economic reasons,"
Lipsey told the Tribune. "It's people living on one
person's income, grandma's Social Security and disability income
for Uncle Fred."
The busiest and most desperate
time for pantries is at the end of the month, when food stamps
run out.
In Ohio and Michigan, where
hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost over
the decade, food stamp use is up 65 percent in Ohio and 74 percent
in Michigan from 2000 to 2005, according to the USDA.
According to a recent report
by the New York Daily News, some 8,000 New York City employees--some
3 percent of the municipal workforce--use food stamps. Mayor
Michael Bloomberg offered cold comfort to the city's low-paid
workers. "Well, if you want to sponsor higher taxes, we'll
have more money," the billionaire mayor told a Daily
News reporter. "There will be always some jobs that
are entry level that don't pay enough."
Though food stamp use is on
the rise, it's still the case that four in 10 people who are
eligible for food stamp benefits don't receive them, according
to a FRAC report. In part, food stamps can be difficult to obtain,
with recipients required to go through a complicated process
to qualify.
"The average food stamps
application is 12 pages, while the federal firearm application
is two," said Aldeen from Second Harvest, which has conducted
studies since 1993 of state food stamp requirements and collected
interviews with applicants.
One of the most severe attacks
on the food stamps program was by the Clinton administration--when
it implemented the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which dismantled
the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.
First on the chopping block
were legal immigrants, who were immediately cut off food stamps.
New rules made millions of childless, jobless adults ineligible,
or put tough restrictions on them.
According to a July 2001 USDA
report to Congress, 56 percent of the caseload declines between
1994 and 1999 "occurred because fewer eligible individuals
participated in the program," rather than because of the
economy or changes in eligibility rules. From December 1997 to
December 2000, the food stamp caseload fell by 3.5 million, according
to FRAC.
Since 2000, the food stamp
rolls are on the rise again. So, too, is the demand for free
school lunches and breakfasts. A record 7.7 million low-income
children received free and reduced-price breakfasts on an average
day during the 2005-2006 school year, according to FRAC. But
it's also estimated that only two in every five children who
need the breakfast program have access to it.
* *
*
EVERY DAY, people are forced
to make what could be life-and-death decisions, based on poverty.
According to America's Second
Harvest's Hunger in America Study 2006, 42 percent of the people
they serve had to choose between paying for food and paying for
utilities or heating fuel. Thirty-five percent had to choose
between paying for food and paying their rent or mortgage.
It makes no sense, in a country
with so much wealth and resources, that a single person goes
hungry.
Funding for and access to food
stamp programs and other food aid programs should be expanded.
Food stamps are underfunded, with the average benefit allowing
just one dollar per person, per meal, according to the Center
for Budget and Policy Priorities. Raising the minimum wage to
a living wage--a demand that's being made by activists in cities
and counties across the country--would go some way toward reducing
hunger.
No one should ever have to
make the decision between food, shelter or other fundamental
human needs.
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