Over 40 percent of mothers with children ages 12 and under are now food insecure in the US
A blog post on the website of The Hamilton Project has revealed that hunger in the US has expanded to historically unprecedented proportions since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among households with young children.
Reporting on evidence from two surveys, The Hamilton Project shows that by the end of April 2020, more than 20 percent of all US households and over 40 percent of mothers with children under the age of 13 were experiencing food insecurity. These figures are between two and five times greater than they were in 2018, when food insecurity data was last collected.
Households and children in the surveys are considered food insecure if a respondent “indicates the following statements were often or sometime true”:
- The food we bought just didn’t last and we didn’t have enough money to get more.
- The children in my household were not eating enough because we just couldn’t afford enough food.
Lauren Bauer, a fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution who specializes in social and safety net policies, wrote in her blog post on Wednesday, “Rates of food insecurity observed in April 2020 are also meaningfully higher than at any point for which there is comparable data” from 2001 to 2018.
Further placing the present ability of families to put food on the table in historical context, Bauer writes, “Looking over time, particularly to the relatively small increase in child food insecurity during the Great Recession, it is clear that young children are experiencing food insecurity to an extent unprecedented in modern times.”
Bauer explains that the surveys conducted their own national sampling of mothers in late April by asking the same questions used by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in previous food insecurity studies.
Significantly, Bauer also explains that the USDA aggregates a battery of questions on access to food from the Current Population Survey in 2018. If the nearly two-to-one ratio between the percent of mothers with children under the age of 12 who had food insecure children in their household and the percent of families with children who were not eating enough because they couldn’t afford enough food were maintained today, the “17.4 percent [of] children not eating enough would translate into more than a third of children experiencing food insecurity.”
The Hamilton Project (THP) is a Democratic Party economic policy think-tank associated with the Brookings Institution. Launched in 2006, the THP featured then-Senator Barack Obama as a speaker at its founding event, who called the organization “the sort of breath of fresh air that I think this town needs.”
The publication of the US hunger data is part of an initiative by THP to push for increases in government spending on national food programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.
However, the Democratic Party proposal to increase food stamp benefits by 15 percent is being considered as a temporary measure “for the duration of the economic crisis,” according to the New York Times. In any case, the increase is still insufficient to provide the poor what they need to adequately feed their families, with the average monthly benefit of $239 going up by $36 to $274 under the Democrats’ proposal.
Meanwhile, with tens of millions who have lost their jobs during the pandemic unable to collect unemployment benefits due to delays and backlogs in government systems that are ill-equipped to handle the increase in applications, the same kind of bureaucratic mismanagement is certainly to be expected in the present wave of SNAP assistance applications.
Along with every social program over the past four decades, federal food stamp assistance has been attacked by Democratic and Republican administrations alike as “welfare” that is undeserved by those receiving it. Before the pandemic, President Trump boasted that he forced 7 million people off of food stamps since taking office and the Congressional Republicans were working on a plan to further reduce eligibility and expand work requirements to qualify for the benefit.
The return of mass hunger in America is an inevitable product of the response of the US government and ruling establishment to the pandemic, which has been a mixture of utter indifference to the suffering caused by the health crisis and outright cruelty toward the working class, poor and elderly who have been attacked by COVID-19 infection and death as well as the deprivation associated with the economic crisis.
Clearly, the staggering magnitude of the impact of the pandemic on families has been revealed by the findings of The Hamilton Project food insecurity study. As dire circumstances confronting millions of people persist and deepen, the crisis is pointing directly to social convulsions that have not been seen in the US since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Editor’s note: The economic crisis brought about by the coronavirus pandemic has increased the number of Americans who can’t always get enough to eat, including children. The Conversation U.S. asked four experts to explain how common child hunger is and what’s being done to address it.
1. How big a problem is child hunger in the US?
Heather Eicher-Miller, associate professor of nutrition science at Purdue University: Hunger has two very different meanings. It can describe that uncomfortable feeling you get after not eating in a while. It’s also a long-term physical state.
People who experience long-term hunger aren’t just uncomfortable. They can feel weakness or pain and run an elevated risk of illnesses, including asthma, iron-deficiency anemia and poor bone health.
Hunger can of course arise when someone doesn’t eat enough, but it’s also a result of food insecurity – what happens when you lack the money or other means of accessing enough of the right kinds or amounts of food.
The Conversation brings you analysis from scientists and medical doctors.
Whereas hunger is a physical condition, food insecurity is an economic and social situation.
David Himmelgreen, professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida: Food insecurity and child hunger have both skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were an estimated 50 million food-insecure Americans by the end of 2020, up sharply from 35 million in 2019, the last year for which official data is available.
Feeding America, the nation’s largest anti-hunger organization, estimated in 2019 that there were 12.5 million U.S. children – 1 in 6 – at risk of hunger. With growth in the number of American workers unemployed and children living in poverty, a team of researchers determined in July 2020 that 18 million children – 1 in 4 – were experiencing food insecurity at least sometimes, a few months into the coronavirus pandemic.
Kecia Johnson, assistant professor of sociology at Mississippi State University: Children who experience hunger are more likely to be sick, to recuperate from illness more slowly and to be hospitalized more frequently.
Among other things, being food insecure increases the potential for obesity, heart disease and diabetes, including for children. And food-insecure children are at least twice as likely as other kids to have a variety of health problems, such as anemia, asthma and anxiety.
Food-insecure kids can also have more trouble at school than other children and become more likely to experience social isolation.
2. What’s being done about the problem?
Diana Cuy Castellanos, assistant professor of dietetics and nutrition at the University of Dayton: Some 15 federal programs assist Americans who need help getting enough nutritious food to eat. The programs cover different populations including the elderly, people with low incomes, infants and children, and Native American communities, as well as areas where there is need for emergency relief due to disasters.
The largest is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known more commonly as SNAP. It provides assistance for the purchase of food based on income and cost US$85.6 billion in the latest fiscal year. Following the passage of a bipartisan relief package in December, most families of four can currently get $782 in monthly assistance through SNAP.
Many people still call these benefits “food stamps,” but now, instead of receiving vouchers to purchase food, people receive a card that looks like a credit card with their food allowance on it.
The government also runs the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides nutritional aid for low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding women and women with at least one child age 5 or under. In addition, there are the School Breakfast and Lunch programs as well as the Summer Food Service Program, which funds free healthy meals and snacks to children and teens in low-income areas when school is not in session.
Many of these programs target specific segments of the population, such as children and the elderly. All have something in common: They are designed to help low-income families afford food so as to free up more of their limited income on other needs, such as housing and transportation.
Himmelgreen: While federal nutrition programs have helped reduce the severity of food insecurity and child hunger, only a limited number of Americans who don’t get enough to eat can take advantage of them. To get SNAP in Florida, for example, people may not have more than a total of either $2,001 or $3,001 – depending on their age and disabilities – in their savings and checking accounts. Other states have similar but different restrictions, making it hard to estimate the number of Americans who need help but can’t get it. Hence, millions more people than ever are relying on drive-through food pantries during the pandemic.
Johnson: There are some 60,000 food pantries, meal programs and food banks, according to Feeding America, serving about 40 million people yearly. Feeding America and its affiliated food banks and pantries also run food pantries in schools and backpack programs, which provide students with easily prepared foods, like boxed macaroni and cheese and canned beans, to take home, throughout the country.
For example, an elementary school in Holmes County, Mississippi, has supplied participating families with food and other supplies since 2019.
Eicher-Miller: Nutrition education is another way to address food insecurity and help reduce the number of children who go hungry. For example, the federal government offers nutrition education to individuals and families who receive SNAP benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education program, or SNAP-Ed. It provides comprehensive nutrition education regarding how to get the most nutrition per food dollar to many of the people who get SNAP benefits and may be having trouble serving their families healthy meals on a limited budget.
The government supports SNAP-Ed in locations like food pantries, community centers and food assistance offices. Its practical budgeting advice, cooking classes and nutrition information make families with children less likely to experience food insecurity, according to a study by my team. When people get the hang of buying the healthiest foods they can on a tight budget, their kids are less likely to go hungry.
I think of nutrition education as a gift that keeps giving in the sense that once someone has the knowledge they can keep using it to stay food secure into the future.
3. What are some of the more promising innovations?
Cuy Castellanos: Food insecurity is a complex problem for many reasons, including the limited access millions of people have to the fresh fruits and vegetables everyone should eat.
That’s why I’m excited to see people starting to grow their own food in low-income communities with few grocery stores or opportunities to buy produce, from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. Nonprofits and families are growing food on their own property or are using vacant lots or land on school or church grounds.
Some groups such as Homefull and Mission of Mary Farms in Dayton, Ohio, have even begun to build greenhouses to extend the growing season and producing root vegetables and leafy greens as well as raising chickens.
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Johnson: A new community garden is also making a difference in the small majority-Black town of Maben in rural Mississippi, where there’s nowhere to buy vegetables. Starting in 2019, local leaders approved the conversion of a former school athletic field into a community garden. Once volunteers from a farmers cooperative had cleared and plowed the field, other volunteers planted and harvested crops of tomatoes, purple hull peas, okra and watermelons. The gardeners distributed this first wave of produce primarily to elderly people in Maben who used to have family gardens and give away their own homegrown food in years past.
Himmelgreen: Many innovative programs across the country are aiming to reduce food insecurity and improve the health of low-income Americans.
At “client food choice” food pantries, clients don’t just pick up boxes of free, nutritious items. Instead, they get to choose the foods they want and get recipes and other kinds of nutrition education. There are also food prescription programs based in hospitals and medical clinics, where patients are screened for food insecurity and, if eligible, enrolled in SNAP and given help connecting with food pantries either on site or nearby.
A growing number of nonprofits also refer people to school-based food pantries, which operate in K-12 public schools and on college campuses and the meals-on-wheels programs that assist people who are homebound.
I believe these programs need to be scaled up or replicated whenever possible in areas where there is a high level of food insecurity and child hunger but a lack of nonprofit help available.
Joe Biden Vows ‘Thorough Investigation’ into Trump Officials for Border Policy
President-Elect Joe Biden said he will ensure there is a “thorough investigation” by the Justice Department into officials of President Donald Trump’s administration who crafted and carried out the “Zero Tolerance” policy at the United States-Mexico border to deter illegal immigration.
During a press conference on January 8, Biden committed to having the Justice Department open an investigation into Trump officials who carried out the Zero Tolerance policy through which adult border crossers entered separate custody from the children they arrived at the southern border with.
The practice, as Breitbart News noted, has been employed since before 2001, though the Trump administration ended the effort in June 2018.
“I’ll commit that our Justice Department, our investigative arms, will make judgments about who is responsible … and whether or not the conduct is criminal across the board,” Biden said. “But as I said yesterday, I am not going to tell the Justice Department who they should prosecute and who they should not.”
“There will be a thorough, thorough investigation of who is responsible and whether or not their responsibility is criminal, and if that is the [conclusion], the Attorney General will make that judgment,” Biden continued.
The Obama administration, for which Biden served as vice president, often used fencing barriers in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) facilities to house child migrants.
Likewise, Biden hinted at his push to quickly pass an amnesty for the majority of 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. and revoke a number of executive orders issued by Trump to reform the nation’s legal immigration system that admits 1.2 million green card holders every year.
“I will introduce an immigration bill immediately and have it sent to the appropriate committees to begin movement,” Biden said. “I will in fact countermand executive orders that the president has in fact initiated that are contrary to what I think is either his authority and/or even if it’s his authority, contrary to the interests of the United States on environmental issues and a range of other things.”
Critics have said Biden is looking to restart a “Hunger Games” migration policy at the southern border in which border crossers are encouraged to carry out a dangerous, and sometimes deadly, journey through Central America and Mexico in order to make their way to the U.S. and be freed into the interior of the country while awaiting their asylum and immigration hearings.
Biden and his advisers have said they plan to tear down the legal wall that Trump has erected to close loopholes and eliminate fraud for the purpose of reducing illegal immigration.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Joe Biden’s DHS Nominee Raked in Millions from Big Tech, Wall Street
President-Elect Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Alejandro Mayorkas, raked in millions over the last two years representing multinational corporations in Big Tech and on Wall Street as a corporate lawyer, financial disclosure reports reveal.
Since 2019, Mayorkas made more than $3.3 million as a corporate lawyer for a series of multinational corporations, financial disclosure reports show, including the tech firms Airbnb, Uber, and Cisco Systems, along with the Wall Street firm Blackstone.
Mayorkas also represented T-Mobile, Intuit, the aerospace corporation Northrop Grumman, Clorox, MGM Resorts International, and the engineering company Leidos.
Specifically while representing Uber, Mayorkas helped ensure that the tech giant was complying with federal immigration laws when it packs foreign workers into its driving jobs. While representing T-Mobile, Mayorkas advised the telecommunications corporation as they merged with Sprint to dominate more market power as a super conglomerate.
Mayorkas’ financial disclosure reports are the latest from Biden cabinet nominees, all showing their close ties to big business, Wall Street, and the Washington, DC beltway.
Biden’s Treasury Department Secretary nominee Janet Yellen, for instance, has raked in more than $7.2 million from Wall Street and corporations for “speaking fees.” In one case, Yellen took nearly $1 million to give nine speeches to Citibank, one of the largest banks in the United States.
Likewise, Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, previously advised as a consultant to tech corporations like Facebook, Uber, and LinkedIn, as well as Wall Street firms like Bank of America and Blackstone.
The progressive wing of the Democrat Party has criticized Biden’s “corporate revolving door” of Washington, DC insiders and executives with close ties to big business and special interests.
“This is not just a revolving door of private industry, but it’s a revolving door of just the same people for the last 10, 20, 30 years … [there is] just an extreme disdain for this moneyed, political establishment that just rules Washington, DC no matter who you seem to elect.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has previously said of Biden’s transition team.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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