It's Not All About Unemployment

There's definitely more information worth highlighting in the new government food security data released on Monday.

"Fifty-five percent of the food-insecure households surveyed in 2008 said that in the previous month they had participated in one or more of the three largest Federal food and nutrition programs--the National School Lunch Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, the new name for the Food Stamp Program), and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

The thing is, why only 55 percent? Here's some other information:

Among households reporting food insecurity, 42.2 percent had incomes below the official poverty line.

Once again, I'd ask why only this much? Presumably, most food insecure households you'd think would be poor, right?

These two findings from the study, I think, set into focus something we have to think about if we want to get really serious about reducing hunger in this country. Plenty of people above the poverty line go hungry because they earn too much to qualify for nutrtion programs, but not enough to cover basic living expenses. So they scrimp on food, one of the most fungible items in any household's budget. 

Lots of people lost their job during the recession. Of course the number of people on food assistance skyrocketed. But for those people who didn't lose their jobs and whose income was between 100-200 percent of poverty (and higher in some high-costs areas of the country like New York City, San Francisco, Washington, DC), they continued to struggle, as they always struggle, because of exorbitant costs of living. Among people surveyed in the study with incomes between 100-130 percent of poverty and between 130-185 percent of poverty, food insecurity rates were 42.5 percent and 37.5 percent respectively.

The food insecurity numbers will decrease once people start going back to work. But for those people still earning too much to qualify for public assistance, but not enough to get the food they need, their problems will not go away, not unless we come up with a better, and more accurate, description of what poverty means in the United States.