US: Food
insecurity may be twice as common as previously estimated
By
Mark Ferretti
10 February 2018
Lack of sufficient access to nutritious food is a much greater
problem for the American working class than previously understood, according to
research published in the Journal
of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition. In a survey of 663
households in Columbus, Ohio, researchers found that 32 percent were food
insecure. This rate of food insecurity is double that of previous estimates
based on county-level census data.
The researchers considered about half of food-insecure households
to be “very low food secure.” People in this group are “skipping meals, at risk
for experiencing hunger, and probably missing work and school and suffering
health problems as a result,” according to Michelle Kaiser, PhD, an assistant
professor of social work at Ohio State, and lead author of the study. Although
the current research only examined Columbus, other metropolitan areas likely
have similar disparities, she added.
“This study exposed the vastly different experiences of people who
all live in the same city,” said Dr. Kaiser. “My suspicion is that most people
don’t recognize that there are such discrepancies and can’t imagine living
where they couldn’t easily go to a grocery store.” Notwithstanding the
obliviousness of the more comfortable layers of the population, these data provide
further evidence that the country’s deepening social divisions are reaching
critical proportions.
For their study, Dr. Kaiser and colleagues surveyed economically
and racially diverse households to understand consumer decision-making and food
access. They also audited 90 food stores for the availability of items on the
US Department of Agriculture’s Thrifty Food Plan and MyPlate list. The Thrifty
Food Plan lists low-cost foods intended to ensure adequate nutrition. This plan
is the basis for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which
also is known as food stamps. MyPlate offers nutritional advice, such as
emphasizing the consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy
proteins.
Although African-Americans were overrepresented among the food
insecure, the totality of the data indicated that the divide between food
security and food insecurity was fundamentally one of class, not of race.
Annual income tended to be less than $25,000 among food-insecure individuals
and more than $50,000 among the food-secure. Full-time employment was
significantly less common in food-insecure households (54.7 percent) than in
food-secure households (75.2 percent). More than 20 percent of food-insecure
households depended on Supplemental Security Income (SSI), veterans’ benefits,
or other disability benefits, compared with 8.5 percent of food-secure
households. About 5 percent of food-insecure households received unemployment
benefits, compared with 3 percent of food-secure households. The food insecure
were approximately five times more likely to participate in SNAP and nearly
four times more likely to participate in the Women, Infants and Children
assistance program than the food secure.
As a part of its turbocharged assault on the working class, the
Trump administration proposes to cut $193 billion from SNAP over the next 10
years. This proposal goes even further than the $8.7 billion cut to SNAP that
President Obama signed into law in 2014. If Trump’s proposal is enacted, it
would deprive millions of poor and working-class Americans of assistance,
forcing many to skip meals.
In Dr. Kaiser’s study, differences in education coincided with
these differences in income. The highest level of education in food-insecure
households was more likely to be a high school diploma, GED, two-year degree,
or technical degree. But a higher percentage of people with a bachelor’s degree
or graduate degree were food secure.
Previous investigations have linked food insecurity with higher
risks of depression, anxiety, and social isolation. Dr. Kaiser and colleagues
found that obesity, high blood pressure, and prediabetes were significantly
more common among the food insecure than the food secure.
The investigators’ audits indicated that supermarkets were more
likely than specialty markets, partial markets or convenience stores to offer
all of the Thrifty Food Plan items and all of the MyPlate recommendations. Yet,
compared with food-secure participants, food-insecure respondents were
significantly more likely to shop at partial markets and convenience or corner
stores, which had poorer selections. One reason is that the food insecure lived
closer to partial markets and convenience stores, while the food secure lived
closer to supermarkets and specialty stores.
More than 27 percent of food-insecure households had difficulties
finding fresh produce, and 26 percent were “not at all satisfied” with
neighborhood food access. “The types of food stores most accessible to
food-insecure households rarely stock healthy food items,” said Dr. Kaiser. “In
contrast, food-secure households are less likely to have to confront the same
environmental challenges as food-insecure households to purchase and consume
healthy foods.”
Barriers to obtaining food (e.g., access, safety or crime, and affordability)
were more common for food-insecure households than for the food secure.
Food-insecure participants also had difficulties with transportation. They were
less likely to use their own cars and more likely to get rides from
acquaintances, ride public transportation, or walk to get food, compared with
the food secure.
More and more grocery stores and supermarkets in low-income areas
are closing, according to Dr. Kaiser. Companies rarely establish a new grocery
store in an urban area, particularly if it would be near a neighborhood with a
high rate of poverty. These decisions are based purely on the profit motive. As
they chase middle-class and wealthy shoppers, the big supermarket chains
shutter stores in poor and working-class areas. Consequently, as Dr. Kaiser’s
study indicates, poor and working-class people are left with fewer options,
which leaves them in worse health than their wealthier peers.
Like companies in any other industry, supermarkets extract their
profits from the labor of their employees. As shareholders demand greater
returns, the supermarket chains abandon less profitable locations and wrest
concessions from their workers. The result is a worsening of inequality and
continuing assaults on the health and well-being of the working class.
"The picture emerging is one of a society wracked by burgeoning social inequality, a catastrophic health crisis, and a government health policy aimed at deliberately lowering life expectancy while catering to corporate profit."
Falling US life expectancy: The product of a deliberate ruling class policy
9 February 2018
An editorial in a British medical journal has focused renewed attention on the shocking reality that life expectancy in the United States is declining. “Failing health of the United States: The role of challenging life conditions and the policies behind them,” published Wednesday in BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal, builds on reports in December by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that revealed US life expectancy declined in 2016 for the second year in a row.
The editorial’s authors, Steven H. Woolf and Laudan Aron, both sat on a joint panel of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine in 2013 that investigated US health disadvantage compared to other member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). According to World Bank Data, the average life expectancy of an aggregate of 35 OECD countries stood at about 75.5 years in 1995. By 2015 the rate had risen to 80.3 years, while the US lagged behind at 78.7 years.
The editorial points to the myriad diseases and behaviors contributing to decreased lifespans in America, as well as to the social and economic factors driving them. The picture emerging is one of a society wracked by burgeoning social inequality, a catastrophic health crisis, and a government health policy aimed at deliberately lowering life expectancy while catering to corporate profit.
The opioid epidemic, alcohol abuse and suicides are leading causes of death in the US. The rate of fatal drug overdoses rose by 137 percent from 2000 to 2014. In 2015 alone, more than 64,000 people died from drug overdoses, exceeding the number of US fatal casualties in the Vietnam War. The suicide rate rose by a staggering 24 percent between 1999 and 2014.
These “deaths of despair” have disproportionately affected white Americans, including adults aged 25-59, those with limited education, and women. The sharpest increases have been in rural areas.
As to why the rise in mortality has been greatest among white, middle-aged adults and some rural communities, the editorial points to possible factors, which all relate to class issues. They include “the collapse of industries and the local economies they supported, the erosion of social cohesion and greater social isolation, economic hardship, and distress among white workers over losing the security their parents once enjoyed.”
The 2013 panel found that “Americans had poorer health in many domains, including birth outcomes, injuries, homicides, adolescent pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.” It found that Americans are more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors, such as intake of high-calorie foods, drug abuse and firearm ownership.
The editorial also notes that such behaviors are linked to “weaker social welfare supports and lack of universal health insurance.” What does this mean in the lives of workers and their families? It means cuts to food stamps and cash welfare assistance, the shutdown of community clinics and scarcity of substance abuse programs, lack of health insurance and/or burdensome medical bills. All these factors contribute to poor health outcomes and premature deaths.
Falling life expectancy—one of the most important measures of the social health of a society—has elicited no response from any faction of the US political establishment, neither the Trump administration nor the Democratic Party. On Thursday evening, the US Senate was deliberating on a two-year budget agreement that would increase military spending by $305 billion.... BLOG: WITH NO FUNDING FOR A WALL AGAINST NARCOMEX!
At his weekly press conference, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that the main factor contributing to the government’s increasing deficit is not the Pentagon’s gargantuan budget, which funds the US military’s aggression around the globe, but the so-called entitlements—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—programs that workers depend on for their retirement and their families’ health.
As the Democratic Party continues its obsession with claims of Russian meddling in the 2018 US elections, the Trump administration has pursued its assault on social programs. After failing in numerous attempts to repeal and/or replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the White House repealed the ACA’s individual mandate as part of the corporate tax overhaul, and has allowed states to begin imposing work requirements for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and the disabled.
Discussion of health care and the well-being of American workers has become a non-issue for the Democrats, as they have emerged as the most adamant representatives of the military-intelligence agencies, supporting an impending war against Russia—in opposition to Trump and the Republicans and their saber-rattling against North Korea.
In reality, the war against the health of American workers has been a bipartisan conspiracy conducted over decades as part of a conscious strategy to pare back the gains won through the social struggles of the working class begun over a century ago.
Under the Obama administration, the implementation of the ACA was a key volley in the ruling elite’s social counterrevolution in health care. Sold as an expansion of health care, it was in fact aimed at limiting and rationing workers’ access to vital medical treatments and medicines as “unnecessary” and “lavish.” At the same time, through the universal mandate, it required individuals and families to purchase coverage from private health insurers under threat of tax penalties.
Both the Democrats and Republicans bemoan the high cost of health care in America. But the reality is that the high cost of health care—Americans pay on average $10,000 per person, per year—is not the result of actual spending on health care for workers and their families for vital treatments. It is because the US leaves the vast majority of pricing for drugs, procedures and hospital stays in the hands of the private sector. While hospitals and drug companies charge outrageous prices, millions of people remain uninsured and untreated.
For the ruling class, the increasing number of deaths of working men, women and youth is a “cost of doing business.” Indeed, it is seen as a positive good, as early deaths mean fewer costs associated with caring for the elderly—and more resources to pump into the stock market.
The US health care crisis is a national emergency. The ruling classes of the world, moreover, look to the US as a model for their own ruthless assault on jobs and social programs. To address this crisis requires a frontal assault on the wealth of the corporate and financial elite.
The vast resources currently monopolized by the top one percent must be made available to finance a universal health care system, in which everyone has access to high-quality care as a basic social right.
Such a social and economic reorganization requires the building of a mass movement of the working class, in opposition to both Democrats and Republicans, uniting workers of all races and nationalities in a fight against the capitalist profit system.
Kate Randall
OPIOID ADDICTION IN AMERICA:
OBAMA AND HIS CRONIES IN BIG PHARMA AT WORK!
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to
the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
PRINCETON REPORT:
American middle-class is addicted, poor, jobless and suicidal…. Thank the corrupt government for surrendering our borders to 40 million looting Mexicans and then handing the bills to middle America?
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