Some student reflections on SNAP

  SNAP has always been something that’s controversial, in my mind.  Growing up I would hear and see people talking about others being poor in the grocery line, not knowing the context or implications that those words may have.  To the people it was directed it, they would get uncomfortable—which of course I understood at the time—but the real world implications of this happening everywhere is quite telling. 

Now the government provides EBT cards that look like credit or debit cards to help with some of the social stigma surrounding SNAP, allowing users to buy groceries without the judgment that they used to experience.  It’s not just the fact that these judgments happened, it’s the fact that people can look down on others for being poor or experiencing temporary hardships, which we all have in life.  I don’t understand why we need to constantly judge others for their situations; instead we should be kind and offer help where needed.

No, this doesn’t mean going up to every SNAP family and asking if they need help.  That would be silly and add to some of the social stigma; instead, gaining real world experience by volunteering at shelters or local programs that help the poor.  Understanding where these people are coming from, and recognizing that not everyone is the same.  Not everyone is abusing the system and driving Mercedes home.  There are people out there trying to get by and to be judged for that is immoral, in my mind.

Hopefully this paper isn’t controversial for those currently in Social Work or going through school to become one.  I don’t want to confuse anyone reading this, however—people can judge others for anything, but to vocalize it and put others down is wrong.  Therapists can judge clients, but they should never vocalize those judgments in a negative way.  

Emotions aside and judgment aside, I want to move towards the benefits and downfalls of SNAP in general.  The program is wonderful, but it has shortcomings as do most things that are government ran (some would argue all things).  One of those things is not accounting for specific circumstances per family.  What I mean by that is certain areas have higher costs of living than others.  So if a family lives in Washington DC, it’s probably going to be more expensive than a family that lives in Memphis, TN.  The government should focus more on cost of living areas rather than a static number based on how big a family is.

One of the great things about SNAP is how it allows families food security while letting them spend money that would have otherwise gone towards food to go to other important things, like rent or utility payments.  Having food security makes a world of difference when you’ve experience insecurity yourself.  It helps with depression; health outcomes; academic outcomes; life expectancy.  All of these things because of one single government program.

I have a friend that uses the program and she benefits tremendously because of it in her life.  She would say all the time that she wishes she didn’t have to always eat ramen noodles because she’s worried about the long term health effects of doing so.  When you get older, thinks like nutrition start to  matter a whole lot more than to a 19 year old collect student in a dorm room forced to eat the same thing for a couple of semesters.

Nutrition is very important.  Unfortunately, SNAP doesn’t necessarily accommodate the highest efficacy in nutritional returns, but some would say its good enough.  I’m in a similar mindset—as long as some nutritional goals are being met and ramen noodles aren’t being served for breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday, then clearly it’s a net benefit to be in the program.

An academic journal talking about poverty in America and how SNAP helps alleviate it had this to say: “We found an average decline of 4.4 percent in the prevalence of poverty due to SNAP benefits, while the average decline in the depth and severity of poverty was 10.3 and 13.2 percent, respectively. SNAP benefits had a particularly strong effect on child poverty, reducing its depth by an average of 15.5 percent and its severity by an average of 21.3 percent from 2000 to 2009.”

References:

Smith, J. A., & Doe, R. B. (2017). Alleviating poverty in the United States: The critical role of SNAP benefits. Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/262233/files/17742_err132_1_.pdf 

You mentioned that Not everyone is abusing the system and driving Mercedes home.  That is an important observation, as it seems to me that many people quickly raise the issue of cheaters who use SNAP benefits because they falsely report low incomes, or who have low incomes, but have hidden wealth or support. I think anyone who deals with the general public soon realizes that a small fraction of people (probably fewer than 5%) are sort of dishonest, slimy, predatory, or psychopathic.  In any system involving lots of people, there are going to be a fraction of people who cheat, steal, lie, and justify this behavior to themselves. However, the sort of cheating where people with hidden wealth or unreported incomes use SNAP must be extremely low (estimates from 2018 suggested a 0.14% fraud rate where recipients were investigated and found guilty of fraud.  If that is 20% of all recipient fraud, the actual level of fraud might be as high as 0.7%.  Fraud committed by retailers trafficking SNAP benefits is estimated at about 1%). 

Your citation from the 2017 article is also encouraging, as it suggests that SNAP makes a significant reduction in experienced (post-tax / post-benefit) poverty. 
I wonder sometimes whether it might be better to just give poor people cash rather than SNAP.  SNAP benefits can only be used to purchase uncooked food (although there are grocery stores that will cook some raw foods for you as a service, for no fee), and so while SNAP benefits help make malnourishment and starvation exceedingly rare in our society, the problems of housing insecurity or other problems of poverty cannot be addressed so much with SNAP, aside from the point you make that every dollar in SNAP is a dollar less the family needs to spend on food, giving the household more money to use for other necessities.

I'm a bit concerned about refusing to allow households to spend SNAP benefits on sweetened drinks, candy, or other morally suspect foods.  A goal of a welfare safety net is to give freedom and autonomy to persons who are suffering a period of low income, either because of an economic hardship they are temporarily passing through, or some more permanent problem, often related to physical or mental health conditions or disabilities. Restricting what people purchase with SNAP benefits will be justified by health concerns, which is why a person is not allowed to purchase cigarettes or alcohol with SNAP benefits, but at some point the restrictions on SNAP use cross from nutrition and science to moral or religious reasons, and I’m wary of that.  For example, I suspect that consuming most meat or animal-derived food products available in supermarkets is immoral, since much of that meat is generated through industrial livestock systems or industrialized marine harvesting, and so if we are going to forbid the consumption of alcohol or soda pop, why not also ban the purchase of animal-protein products and restrict SNAP users to vegetarian diets?  What if some persons thinks that only organic food is moral or healthy, and we start forcing SNAP to be used only for organic products?  This seems like a Reductio ad absurdum argument, but I think the assumption that we should be strict in limiting what welfare recipients do with the aid we give them is one that we must treat with caution and concern, if we highly value individual liberty and dignity.

The earlier part of your reaction where you think about how people are eager to judge others reminds me of some psychological experiments that show humans tend to be very good at detecting cheating and unfair exchanges where someone else gets an advantage.  Helping people overcome that innate tendency toward distrust, cynicism, paranoia, and judgmental prejudices is certainly a huge task we have in advancing civilization and improving society. I wish people were better at recognizing the actual levels of threat from cheating and deceit. 

As for government programs being inherently inferior.  Of course they are.  In an ideal or perfect society, people would be so honest, charitable, fair, and open-hearted that we would not need a public welfare system, nor police, courts, nor jails.  Taxes would be very low, paying mainly for infrastructural improvements and pooling risk.  Given the scope of the problems we face, given the actual material (humans and their human natures) we are dealing with, we must settle for government and coercive charity through social welfare systems, at least for the time being. I look forward to the utopian anarchy our remote descendants may someday enjoy when people are better than they are now.  

Student opposes drug testing of SNAP beneficiaries

SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), also called food stamps, is for low income people and families who cannot afford their food. Without this program, millions of people in the United States would go hungry. The United States Department of Agriculture provides SNAP, and it works by giving people a certain amount of money each month that can only use on food. It is put onto a card similar to a debit card. People get a certain amount depending on how many people are in their household, how much money they make, and how much their rent and utilities are. It is a great program for helping end hunger in the United States. 

One problem we face with SNAP is that Republicans and the Trump Administration are trying to make it so certain states are allowed to drug test food stamp recipients. The wrong-headed ideal of this policy proposal is that people receiving food stamps must be forced to go through drug testing, and without drug testing they will not be able to receive food stamp benefits. This is wrong in many ways. At the surface level, it may seem like a good idea that drug addicts cannot get food stamps, but what about their children? Should children of parents who have used drugs starve and suffer because of their parents’ illicit drug use? It really is not fair at all. I don’t, and I hope most people do not want children going hungry because their parents struggle with addiction, and even if someone does not have any children and they are addicts, do they deserve to starve? I have a very strong opinion that no one should starve, no matter what. Murderers and rapists in prison don’t starve, but they are trying to make someone with a drug addiction starve when they are not harming others, just themselves. 

Another reason why it is a bad idea to drug test food stamp recipients is because of how costly it is. Seven states have already tried this, but on TANF instead of food stamps (TANF is a different welfare program that gives cash grants to some poor families) and they have already spent one million dollars on these drug tests, and they will have to spend millions more as the years go by, but it has been shown that applicants who have been drug tested have tested positive at a lower rate than the general population. Drug testing does not work to help people get treatment for their addictions. Instead of spending this much money on drug testing applicants of welfare programs, we ought to be implementing better programs to help the poor move out of poverty, and help persons with substance use issues move toward sobriety. 

Hunger in the United States is a real problem, and forcing applicants to be drug tested will not help solve the problem. More people will starve. More people will steal, so they will be able to survive. Instead of spending millions of dollars to drug test food stamp recipients, we could increase the amount of benefits hungry persons receive because a majority of people who get food stamps do not get enough to last them the whole month. They do okay for the first couple weeks, but then they end up having to go to the food pantry because they run out of food. 

The SNAP program does need to be changed, but forcing people to be drug tested has more negative consequences than positive ones. People will also be losing a sense of self determination and autonomy over their own lives, because they already have to jump through many hoops just to get help from the government, but adding drug tests as something they have to do will just make them more dependent and less self-sufficient. 

I think the most important thing is that everyone gets to have the food that they need. Family members should not hurt because they have a parent or sibling who cannot stay clean. It is not fair to either of them, and there are other programs that we should have to help people who struggle with addiction. Not giving people food is not going to magically make them stay off drugs. 

I'd like to mention a few facts here to help support your editorial. 

In the first part of 2018, the maximum SNAP benefits for families in Illinois who live with no income are as follows:
single individuals: $192 per month;
single parents with one child or two-adult households: $352;
household with three persons: $504;
household with four persons: $640;
household with five persons: $760.

According to the USDA’s March 2018 food plans:
For a thrifty food budget, a family of two adults aged 19-50 years old need $382 per month; and for a family of four with two adults and two children aged 6-8 and 9-11 years old, the monthly food budget needed is $639.  

For the low cost plan, the amount needed for the two-adult household is $490, and for the family of four with two children and two adults, the amount needed for a month is $841.

For the moderate-cost plan, the amount for the two-adult household: $583.  For the four-person household: $1048.

In 2014, when there were about 120 million American households, total spending per month on food in and outside of home was about $1.15 billion, or approximately $960 per month per household (and the average American household has about 2.5 persons).  

Clearly, the SNAP benefits are not allowing poor persons to receive such lavish benefits that they can live with food consumption that matches typical American diets.  In fact, the SNAP benefits provide less than 40% of the resources that would allow a poor household without income to consume food at a level that matches the American average.  

SNAP benefits aren’t generous.  SNAP benefits do, however, combat hunger.  SNAP benefits reduce the number of Americans living in extreme poverty (looking at consumption levels to define poverty) by about half. 

Women, Infants, and Children

The federal nutritional assistance program, commonly known as WIC or Women, Infants, and Children, provides low income mothers with food assistance to provide herself and child with healthy groceries.  There are certain eligibility requirements that the mother must meet to qualify for assistance, there are four main categories; categorical, residential, income, and nutrition-risk.  The women who is applying for assistance must be pregnant, breastfeeding, or mothering a child up to five years of age.  You must be living in the state for which you are applying, but unlike other government programs, there is no time limit to be living within the state before you are eligible.  Each state has set a limit to which the applicants income must meet or fall below this rate to qualify.  Lastly, all applicants and children must go to monthly check-ups to assess nutritional health of the mother and children.  They must rule the mother or children as being of nutritional-risk or diet-risk.  This means that if you or your child is anemic, underweight, history of poor pregnancy, poor diet, etc., you should qualify for this type of nutritional assistance.  

The Department of Agriculture created Women, Infants, and Children nutritional assistance in 1972 to provide health assistance to low-income families to improve the health and well-being of pregnant women, new mothers, infants, and children.  Most states will allocate money to participants through a reloadable card, which will be added monthly at the regular check-ups the mother and children must attend.  There are nearly 50,000 stores nationwide who participate in the WIC program and allow the government issued cards to be used as payment.  This allows women to purchase fruits, vegetables, baby formula, baby food, whole grains, milk and other fresh foods.  

I have created my own pros and cons list to this program. Some positive things I have found that this program offers are:

• Women who are breastfeeding can make the most from this program.  They can purchase healthy foods and have a higher intake in vitamins and minerals through natural foods that will be transferred to the infant through the breast milk.  Once the child stops breastfeeding, formula becomes the main expense on the WIC monthly budget for the mother due to how expensive it is.
• Breast-pumps are provided to new mothers who are in need and cannot afford one and promotes the child drinking breast milk over formula. 
• Qualified foods you may purchase include all fruits and vegetables, whole grains, formula and baby food, certain cereals, milk, eggs, meats, etc.  

There are negative aspects as there are in every government program.  Some of the cons I found are:

• Appointments can be hard for new mothers to attend each month. This makes it harder in rural areas where women must drive some distance to get to the nearest WIC clinic.
• This program does not cover the costs for any special diet formula the infant may need unless they have a serious metabolic disorder.  Babies who are lactose intolerant or low iron who need a specialized formula will not be covered by the WIC program.  This leaves a large bill for new mothers who are having to buy even more expensive, specialized formula. 
• Once the money allocated for the year for WIC programs, when the money runs out, it is gone until the following fiscal year.  The more families who need help, the faster the money will run out.
• There is also poor fraud control with this program, mothers are applying for assistance and then cashing out the money that they have not spent for the month.  [Where did you get this idea?  Is there a study or an article that makes this claim? I'm aware of studies of trafficking (selling food benefits in exchange for cash) in the SNAP, but I've never heard of such a study of WIC. I suppose families could re-sell the milk and cereal and juice and cheese they buy with WIC coupons. I wonder how commonly that occurs.]

There are both positive and negative aspects to this program; however, the benefits for women and children seem to outweigh the negative aspects of it.  I encourage government officials to continue to promote and fight for these nutritional assistance programs.  

A student wants restrictions on what SNAP can purchase

A letter to a person in government written by a student:

I would like to discuss an issue with you regarding social welfare and the use of food stamps. Although I strongly believe they are doing more good than harm, I think there are some improvements that need to be done. 

Food stamps are supposed to help out those families in need with low incomes to be able to provide food for their families. They are sent an x amount of money each month to be able to go to the grocery store and purchase food. Although I know that food stamps cannot be used to purchase alcohol or tobacco, there should be more restrictions on them. I am sick and tired of standing behind families and watching them buy bags of chips and sodas with their food stamps. I also don’t like seeing families purchasing high dollar steaks and seafood. Food stamps main purpose is to help those families in need. I am a hard worker, as well as my parents, and it’s still a struggle to be buying high dollar meals from the grocery store. I feel that food stamps should be more along the lines of WIC. WIC allows mothers to buy their infants the products they need to survive but doesn’t allow them to buy any baby food they prefer. Therefore with food stamps, families should only be able to buy fruits and vegetables or potatoes and hamburger. 

Overall I know food stamps are a necessity to many families and they are using them as they should, but there are also all of those families out there taking advantage of the free money and using their money to purchase alcohol and tobacco. It just doesn’t seem fair. 

There are really two issues here.  In the first place, there is a real problem when a government program that should promote nutritional health may be promoting obesity and poor health.  That is, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) should reduce malnutrition and hunger, and help people get nutritious food that will keep them healthy and strong.  But, if people are free to use this program to buy products that are injurious to health, some of them may choose to buy too much of these unwholesome things, and not enough of the nutritious food they ought to buy.  In the second place, people may be upset if people using SNAP purchase expensive foods that most people cannot afford to regularly consume.  Assuming the SNAP recipients who are purchasing luxury foods are honestly receiving SNAP, their luxury purchasing suggests they have poor budgeting skills and probably run out of SNAP money and go hungry in the final days of each benefit period.  But, the remedy is also fraught with problems.  Restricting what people can purchase with SNAP is a matter of diminishing the liberty of the poor, and it is a paternalistic approach to managing and controlling the poor.  This may not be a problem for everyone, but some people are concerned about this.  There will also be controversy as any bureaucrat or committee determines which products are luxurious or unwholesome.  Are all cookies to be banned, or should we allow some sorts of more nutritious cookies?  What is a luxury food?  Salmon often costs $9 or $10 per pound, and berries and nuts can also cost that much.  But, fatty fish such as salmon is an important part of a nutritious diet (if you happen to eat meat), and nuts and berries are an important part of a wholesome diet (especially if one refrains from eating much meat).  Do we simply insist that SNAP benefits can only be used to purchase unprocessed foods, or minimally processed foods?  Where is the dividing line between foods that are "too processed" and foods that are okay?  Imagine the complexity of the regulations! Imagine the turmoil at the check-out lane as grocery store employees try to determine whether a specific type of cheese is permitted or is considered "luxury" and banned.

There are studies of what people actually purchase with SNAP benefits, and you might have referred to these to support your proposal to restrict how SNAP benefits should be used.

Think People On Food Stamps Are Eating More Lobster Than You? Think Again  (Huffington Post, May 16, 2015)

Stores Accepting Food Stamps Face Stricter Rules (Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2016)

Government Accounting Office information about SNAP.
 

Food Assistance isn't the problem.

One area of social policy that has received a lot of attention more than it should in a negative way lately is social assistance for the poor in the way of food stamps. It is a long held belief by some that this is taxpayer’s money being given to free loaders, and poor people who refuse to work and support themselves. There are rampant reports about the misuse and abuse of food stamps or Link in the media. Some people take the apparently compassionate point of view that food stamps trap the poor and create a system that will never allow them to get on their feet independently. The news media—especially Fox News—is quick to highlight instances of people caught gaming the system. In more subtle ways it has led to the idea that most recipients of food assistance are minorities, which makes people respond to this in many ways. I have heard numerous stories both from Fox News and fellow Republican colleagues about how food stamp recipients dine on steak and lobster with their meager food assistance benefits, which is a myth.

What is not portrayed in the mainstream media is that the federal government spends only 12% on safety Net program (SNAP, housing assistance, etc) compared to 19% spent on Defense and International security, 24% towards Social Security, 22% on Medicare, CHIP, and also most food assistance recipients are European-American or that most recipients are United States Veterans. What is also never portrayed is that many recipients are physically or developmentally disabled and could never obtain employment although many would want to be independent. It is also not explained that disabled recipients are living on an average of $165 a month for food (about $80 less than a thrifty food budget). Another missing statistic in the food stamp debate is the actual amount of tax dollars that end up in the food assistance program. For example, if I made $50,000 a year, $33 would go to welfare and $895 would go towards corporate subsidies or tax giveaways to corporations and wealthy citizens, which is starkly different than the picture the media paints, and then again, the people who own the media are getting $895 of that tax money, so they have incentive to keep me focused on complaining about where that $33 goes. Let’s keep it real; the media will rather shield facts as the federal spending on SNAP is not the reason why the country is in debt but the media tend to shine light negatively to brain wash the average citizen and misleading us. 

For additional reading, check out the USDA food plans, and consider how much people actually pay for food to what low income people get for food from the SNAP.  See also the research on food prices and actual spending. 

The real problem is often unaffordable housing combined with low wages. Suppose you live in a city on the coasts, or in Chicago, and fair market rents are very high.  And let us imagine you work full-time for $10-$12 per hour.  In such a situation, you will spend a huge amount of your money on your housing, and what is left over may need to pay for transportation and child-care and so forth, and not much will be left for food.  About 14 percent of American households (with 125 million households, this means about 17.5 million households) are food insecure at some point in the year. We know from survey research by the USDA that there are about 1.2 million American households where an adult goes a full day without eating at least three or more times of year because of food insecurity.  Yes, we actually do have real hunger in the United States.  And the food and nutrition we give to families is just as much a benefit to farmers and grocers and agribusiness anyway, but no one ever points this out.  People in the food business would rather sell their products to poor people with the public paying the bill than letting those people go hungry.

  SNAP costs us about $77 billion per year these days, and we spend another 22 billion on school lunches and other child nutrition programs, plus about $6 billion on WIC.  So, that's a total of $105 billion each year.  These are big programs, but they help many people. Each month about 45 million Americans get food with SNAP benefits, and over 30 million children get free or reduced lunches, or other nutritional benefits through various child nutrition programs, mostly provided through school cafeterias.  And then there are another 9 million or so people in families getting benefits from WIC, including nutrition education as well as food. 

School Lunch Program Deserves Support

This is an editorial written by a student.

The commercials on television play slow sad music and show depressing pictures of young children to depict the suffering they are going through because they are hungry.

Often times when I see these commercials I let it play or switch the channel because I did not care to see the problems in America.

After studying the issue of hunger in America more in depth in my classes I have a whole new perspective on the issue.  I now believe that it is a human right to have the means to satisfy their hunger.

There is not one reason that a person should not be given the opportunity to eat, yet according to statistics we have discussed in class, about 1.14% of households will not eat on a given day. As human beings, I think we should have the duty of making sure people are given food to satisfy their need.

Certain programs are put in place to try and ease the suffering these people are going through. One of these programs is SNAP or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This is set by the government to help families that do not have the ability to pay for food, to purchase food necessary. According to the lessons we discussed during our class, during any given month, around forty million people in the United States, participate in the SNAP program. I think that if the government would pay more attention to the families that apply for SNAP, they would be able to prevent the families from going hungry in the first place. If they did more research on what different problems the families are facing, I feel their situations would be helped and they could be directed in a better way of living.

Another program that the government has put in place is Free and Reduced Lunches for children and teenagers attending school.

This program is a federally assisted meal program that helps families who otherwise could not pay for their children’s food at school.

According to the USDA, the budget for these school meals is $87 billion dollars. Though this seems like a lot of money, to me, I do not feel that this is an adequate amount given the amount of people who go without food in this country.

Knowing that millions of people suffer from food insecurity and very low food insecurity, I feel that the next step it so make more people more aware.

If everyone in America knew the numbers of people who are suffering and could actually see the faces of these people, I feel a big change would come. If people would donate more of their time to help people in need, then maybe, just maybe, less people will go hungry. I know that I now want to do my part, even if it means just donating canned food to a food drive, I want to help people to the best of my ability.

Resources

"National School Lunch Program." Web. 03 May 2012. .

No Kid Hungry Campaign

Here is a student essay describing a policy or program. 

On March 14, 2012, Governor Patrick Quinn announced a new partnership in efforts to end childhood hunger in Illinois. A 2011 report from Feeding America found that more than 745,000 children in Illinois are at risk of hunger. Families are struggling to put food on the tables and provide nutritious meals. The organizations, Share Our Strength and Illinois Commission to End Hunger gathered at Parker Elementary Community Academy in Chicago to announce the Commission’s report and start off the Illinois No Kid Hungry campaign. The campaign will work to help teach more families about federally funded programs to help assist in hunger needs such as; school breakfasts and summer meals which provide children with a healthy start they need. They will also help families learn how to cook healthy yet affordable meals for their families. Share Our Strength and the Greater Chicago Food Depository have joined together to begin the Illinois No Kid Hungry Campaign. With the help of their sponsors; Jimmy Dean, Walmart, Arby’s Foundation, and supporter- Weight Watchers, Illinois will soon be looking at a shrinking number of children who are hungry.

Any school that is a public school, nonprofit private school, or a residential child care institution can choose to take part in the School Breakfast Program. More than 770,000 students are eligible for the free or reduced breakfasts and lunches at school, yet less than one half of the students are participating in this program. This means children are coming to school hungry because there is not enough food to eat at home. Hungry children are less likely to perform to their highest potential in the classrooms. Also, less than 15% of the children who are eligible for the summer meals receive them. Illinois is actually in the top five states that have actually lost federal funding due to low participation rates for these services. The young children of our communities need good nutritious meals in order to grow physically and keep up with their academics to their full potential. Through the help from Share Our Strength, children who are in need will be enrolled in federal nutrition programs and families will be taught how to cook healthy and affordable meals. The families will learn how to select nutritious, yet low-cost ingredients and prepare meals in ways to ensure the best nourishment for their family.

 With the help from Illinois Commission to End Hunger and No Kid Hungry students and their families will be better aware of the programs available. With the generous help from numerous not-for-profit programs, the people of Illinois can receive help without using any state money or without raising taxes. This is a big relief that the state is not going further into debt with this Commission to End Hunger program. Share Our Strength and No Kid Hungry campaigns in 16 other states besides Illinois. These states include Maryland and Colorado, where it has been an incredible success. In Maryland, this campaign has helped to increase the number of children eating summer meals by 7.5%. In Colorado, has increased the participation in school breakfast program by 430,000 more meals served. It looks like Illinois is on the same road to success as these other states are to end hunger for the children.

Student reaction essay on hunger.

    From when I can remember, I have the same routine everyday: take a shower, eat breakfast, and brush my teeth. Throughout each and every day I consume various snacks along with having lunch and dinner.  When I begin to worry about the certain things I deal with in life, I have never had to worry when my next source of food will be. I can wake up every morning fully assured that I will have a meal on my plate. To know that there are people who do not have this luxury in the world, let alone in the United States, is heartbreaking. We need to implement policies that ensure no one should have to go hungry.

    The world is facing a hunger crisis unlike anything else it has seen in nearly 50 years. Every day almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. That's one child every 5 seconds. Every year 15 million children die of hunger. The World Bank estimates that the spike in global food prices in 2008, followed by the global economic recession in 2009 and 2010 has pushed between 100-150 million people into poverty. Suffering from poverty results in one of many things: less money for food.

    A recent study given to us in one of our lectures stated that 1.4 million people go a day without eating because of the lack of resources to obtain food. We also learned that 64 million people suffer from very low food security. Of these people that had very low food security, 20% of them went a whole day with nothing to eat. I immediately thought to myself that there is no way these statistics can be true. I eat meals on a daily basis, why isn’t everyone else in the world.

    Nearly one in four people, live on less than $1 per day, while billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people.  While the military continues to spend money, one missile could feed a school full of children every day for 5 years. I strongly believe that hunger and race are intertwined in the United States. In 1991, 46% of African-American children were hungry as compared to 16% of white children. The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40% and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age.

    I never thought twice about how fortunate I am to have the luxury of eating. I always thought we all had to eat to survive, but 16.1% of people in the world are malnourished! This statistic is extremely high and should have never been this high in the first place. I feel since the United States is such a strong and powerful country, we should have the power to feed everyone. One of the Millennium Development Goals in the U.N. is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. This goal should be implemented throughout the world and quickly! Providing the food and nourishment that is needed to maintain overall good health is a responsibility each person owes another.

Reaction Paper on Food

Here is a decent reaction paper on hunger:

Ban Ki-Moon, the former United Nations General Secretary, wrote in a March 12, 2008 editorial (available at the Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/11/AR2008031102462.html) editorial:

This is the new face of hunger, increasingly affecting communities that had previously been protected. Inevitably, it is the "bottom billion" who are hit hardest: people living on one dollar a day or less. When people are that poor, and inflation erodes their meager earnings, they generally do one of two things: They buy less food, or they buy cheaper, less nutritious food. The result is the same -- more hunger and less chance of a healthy future.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated in 2007 that 850 million people on the planet suffered from hunger, with 820 million of these living in developing countries.  One of the Millennium Development Goals was to get the number of persons experiencing hunger down to 400 million by 2012, but by 2009 the FAO estimated 1.023 billion humans suffered chronic hunger, and then 925 experienced this in 2010 (see FAO media release from September 14, 2010 at http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/45210/icode/).

As terrible as this hunger is in developing nations, I’m alarmed that there were 30 million people outside of the developing nations who experienced hunger in 2007. These were people living in developed nations; the rich nations. It seems to me ridiculous and unacceptable that in a wealthy food-producing place like our country there should be people experiencing hunger. In the United States our main policy to prevent hunger is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, still called “food stamps” although the name has changed and most people use electronic debit cards for their benefits rather than “stamps”).  Lately there have been over 44 million Americans getting SNAP benefits in any given month (http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/SNAPsummary.htm). These numbers have increased dramatically since the start of the Great Recession, and costs for the program have doubled over what they were in 2007 (from $35 billion to $72 billion in 2011). And yet, we know that as recently as 2006, a quarter of persons who qualified for SNAP benefits didn’t get them, mostly because they never applied for them, or their parents didn’t apply (see the participation rate report at http://www.fns.usda.gov/ora/menu/Published/snap/FILES/Participation/Trends2002-09Sum.pdf). In America today we have 14.5% of households experiencing some food insecurity (see http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/). Why is this?

Persons in America who experience poverty have many potential services from the public to keep them from becoming hungry.  SNAP is the biggest program, but there are also school lunch and breakfast programs for children. There are food pantries and soup kitchens or bread lines. Households may qualify to get monthly benefits through Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), or perhaps Supplemental Security Income (SSI) if someone in the household is disabled. Low-income families may get the Earned Income Tax Credit, and they may get medical care through Medicaid, and they may get help with energy bills through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). For housing, there are public housing units and vouchers for subsidized housing. And despite all this, there are still many Americans (over two million) who will skip meals or even go a whole day without eating because of their poverty in any given month.

I suppose these persons who go hungry are probably not using all the welfare benefits they could use.  They may be too embarrassed.  Or, perhaps they are ignorant of what they can get. There may be some people who have low incomes, but are not especially poor, and perhaps these people have too much income to qualify for many benefits, but then for some other reason they spend all their money on housing or medicine and have nothing left over at the end of a month to pay for food.  For example, a middle-class family that suddenly loses employment may still have too much income to qualify for food assistance, but they may have significant debt, or a someone may need very expensive medical care or medicine, and the family might choose to avoid becoming homeless or having their power turned off, or avoid dying from not taking expensive medicines, and those choices could mean that they run out of food.  Such families might be the most embarrassed and the most ignorant when it comes to getting welfare benefits.

How could social workers or food banks reach out to those who are ashamed or do not know where they can get assistance?  Outreach and publicity should be part of all the welfare programs and food bank missions. The goals for these programs and agencies should be to protect people against hunger, and that means they need to find anyone who might go hungry and convince them that everyone needs help now and then through life, and there is no shame in getting help for a period when one needs it. Food banks and food pantries should advertise more, both to collect more donations and to attract more “customers” to collect needed food. Low income neighborhoods may require the most advertising, but middle-class neighborhoods shouldn’t be overlooked. I believe if we do more to let people know about what help is available, and help them feel comfortable accepting the help after sudden layoffs or when they have exhausted their other resources, we should nearly eliminate hunger entirely, so that researchers will not be able to find the people who skip meals or go for a whole day without eating simply because they have no money for food. That should be our goal.

It is important for the United States to continue giving agricultural aid and food support to end hunger for the hundreds of millions of poorest people in the developing nations, but we also must work to eliminate hunger in our own society.

Ending Hunger in Illinois

An Effort to End Hunger in Illinois 

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 1,532,238 people, including 500,000 children, now live in poverty in Illinois. Living in poverty means that in many cases, a major concern for families is how to provide sufficient amounts of food for survival. There are currently 8 food banks located throughout Illinois that serve an estimated 1 million people a year. In the past two years, there has been a 50 percent increase in the amount of people that require emergency hunger relief help. In an effort to help with this growing problem, Senate Bill 3158 created and sponsored by Senator Don Harmon establishes a Commission to End Hunger. In early March 2011, Governor Pat Quinn announced that 22 individuals will be appointed to the commission.

The individuals appointed come from a wide variety of not-for-profit programs. There are both Democratic and Republican representatives who have agreed to work together for the greater good of Illinoisans. There are representatives that range from different food pantries to minority groups to AIDS foundations and even a representative from Kraft foods. Since hunger is not limited to one group of people, it makes sense that so many programs are interested in helping to fight the problem that affects so many people in Illinois.

With Illinois being in a heated debate over how to cut funds to rectify the extreme debt the state is in, this program is a breath of fresh air in that it will focus on helping the needy without using anymore state funds. An article published by Don Harmon’s staff on his website states that “an amendment explicitly states that DHS [Department of Health Services] and the State of Illinois will not incur any costs because meeting coordination, reports, and other duties will be completed by a food bank representative who will serve as co-chair of the Commission” (Harmon staff).  In fact, one goal of the program is to research how to receive an estimated 42 million dollars in federal funds from the government to avoid putting the state in any more debt.

Although there are already programs in place that are focused on providing food for children, the focal point of the Commission to End Hunger revolves around educating individuals on what programs are available to them. In addition, the commission will spend time coordinating opportunities for individuals to participate in programs available to them. A final responsibility for individuals working with the commission will be to research what other sources are available to fund programs that are fighting hunger.

Senator Harmon is focused on making sure that this is not another program that is established and then forgotten. In his proposal, he states that the members of the commission will gather approximately every two years to reevaluate the progress made or determine what changes need to be made.

This program could potentially help the 1,532,238 people mentioned at the start of this article. If all goes as planned, with the help of Senator Harmon’s proposal, we will be on our way to having an exceptionally less hungry state. 

A short observation on poverty and programs

Here is a short student paper with my response.

Poverty

            Why are so many people in our country living below the poverty line? Is the poverty line not set a reasonable level?

            I think that our country has flaws in the system currently that make it almost impossible for many people to get out of poverty once they enter it. It is obviously not a desirable option for anybody. Unfortunately many people do not know where they can go to get assistance or are denied the accessibility. It is than likely whenever a person applies for disability assistance, they are denied the first time and must apply multiple times. Alright, so they are already disabled, yet they must wait and go through the process multiple times before they get any help? That sure does not make any sense to me and is only one of many flaws in our system. Why are we not trying to help the people that need it?

            In addition to the problems of our system denying help to some people who clearly need it, we also have the problem of people getting assistance when they do not need it.  It seems to me that in many cases we need to more tightly control how we help people. There are people who use their LINK card to buy alcohol or trade with others. I am also aware of people who are using SSI or other forms of assistance to buy drugs. I do not support this in any way, but that is how the people are trying to survive. Maybe drug tests needs to be put into effect to get specific forms of aid.

            Poverty is difficult, this is a fact. There are ways to get out of poverty and to help yourself, but people do not where to go or what to do. There are also people receiving aid that probably should not. Our government system needs to be fixed so that we can help those that need it.

As we squeeze those who receive benefits so that we catch the undeserving ones who cheat, we will increase administrative costs and inconvenience the ones who are honest and do need the money, and we are likely to deny some benefits to those who really deserve it.  Likewise, if we make it easier for people to get benefits, and deny fewer claims for programs such as SSI, we are likely to allow more dishonest and unworthy applicants to get benefits. This is the way the world works.  Given a willingness to allocate a certain percentage of program costs to administration and regulation, we can choose to be tight-fisted and deny more worthy applicants or use a more open hand and allow more undeserving to get benefits. Spending more on administration and regulation might reduce both types of problems, but at some point it becomes ridiculous to devote too much money that could be helping worthy applicants to hunting for the less worthy.  This is sometimes called the “unavoidable error” problem in social welfare policies.  Given large and complex systems that give out benefits to people, error will occur.  Which error do we prefer, the error of too much regulation and control, or not enough regulation and control?  Are we more concerned with being too generous and having cheaters take advantage of us, or of being too stingy and denying help to those who deserve it and would greatly benefit from it?  If we spend 20% of some welfare budget to administer and control it, is that somewhat like stealing from those who should be getting benefits to support swarms of parasitic bureaucrats, social workers, investigators, and paper-pushers, or is 20% a reasonable amount?  What about 10%, or 30%?  At some point we have to accept a bit of sloppiness and a bit of error. You can’t have a perfect system.  A system that denies a few worthy applicants and allows a few cheaters may be the optimal system, so long as a very small percentage of worthy applicants are wrongly rejected, and a very high percentage of would-be cheaters are discouraged or caught, and all this is achieved with a very low percentage of program expenses going to administrative costs and a very high percentage 

Editorial about Food Security Policies

Here is a student paper about hunger and food security policies.

The food and hunger policy in America is very beneficial for our fellow Americans. The policy has its ups and downs but throughout the years it has become a huge success for those who suffer from hunger. While there is still a high number of people who don’t receive a sufficient amount of food throughout the year, the numbers of people who receive government assistance are increasing with the help of the government and our local communities. Do you ever wonder how the awareness of hungriness is discovered? The Economic Research Services plays a large role in research on a federal level of food security. From the statistics gathered in 2008 by the Economic Research Services, it was found that in the United States eighty-five percent of people in the United States were secure with food in their households, while 14.6 percent did not have a secure amount of food in their houses sometime throughout the year. There are many different food programs designed by the government that provides assistant for those who have an insecure amount of food in their homes. The most popular program is SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is a very good program and provides people with a reasonable amount of grocery voucher money monthly. This program has helped over 24 million low-income Americans each month, according to the United States Department of Agriculture from 2008 figures. There was also a total of $37.5 billion used to supply the SNAP program amongst those low-income American families.

This program is sufficient because it focuses on helping those who are in need for food the most based on their income status and household size. While this program provides food for families it also educates them on proper dieting that helps them maintain their health for the better. So because of this requirement, education around the United States is increasing and helping people to make wiser food choices when they shop at grocery stores.

Although State participation in SNAP Education is voluntary, I feel as if it would be beneficial if it was a requirement and not an option. This education is given to improve the life of the Americans and it would help people to live longer and have less health problems as they age. This program is also beneficial to the low-income Americans because it decreases the number of children living in poverty. According to the Economic Research Service, the number dropped 4.3 percent because of SNAP. With the SNAP program more people are likely to feel secure about the amount of food they have in their homes versus not having SNAP and people feeling insecure. When people have the needed amount of food in their homes for their families they are more likely to succeed in taking care of other areas in their households. Some of those things would be employment, education, parenting, and basically life skills.

One student thinks we should cut food assistance to the homeless.

Check out this editorial by one of my students:

I have long been aware that food stamps are available in this state for the poor, children, and homeless in our society; however I was unaware that those who live in shelters are approved for $200.00 a month per person in food stamps.

I have worked with the homeless for about three years and I see flaws in the system. The clients who live in shelters in Springfield without cost to them for anything (including meals, shelter, social services, bus tokens, telephone use, or any clothing we may have on hand), yet these clients are automatically eligible for food stamps. The client only has to stay overnight and they can qualify as a homeless person and therefore qualify for this benefit.

This seems to me to be a form of either fraud or double dipping. I have long asked many questions about this procedure and I believe that a homeless client should not be eligible for food stamps as long as he or she lives in a state or federally funded free shelter. I do believe that each case is unique and should be look at individually, and I am sure there are cases where it is necessary for the client to have food stamps, but I have not seen many in the three years I have worked there who did not need food stamps.

We need to assess the needs of each client, and if the client is staying at a shelter he should be required to donate the card or a portion of the card to the shelter while in the shelter. We must stop some of the waste so that we can use the funds for those in the need most.

Here is my reaction.

This is certainly a thought-provoking editorial, and I am glad you wrote such an interesting piece. You present a “fact” (I wonder if it’s really true that each person living in a homeless shelter qualifies for $200 per month in SNAP benefits, so that a family of four living in a homeless shelter would receive $800 in credit on their LINK card) and then point out that this is a flawed policy. You seem to be saying that since homeless shelters provide meals to their clients, those clients should, as part of a “payment” for staying at the shelter, be required to share their food security income (SNAP benefits) with the shelter, at least so that the shelter can use this money to supply the client with meals.

You also point out that persons who stay in a homeless shelter may have incomes that would make SNAP benefits unnecessary. For example, a person earning $13 per hour might be able to afford a low-rent apartment, but they could be saving up for a down payment on a better housing arrangement, and using the shelter as a place where they can reduce their costs of living while they save up money to pay for a better living space. In such situations, it seems fair that such persons not be given automatic benefits of $200 per month for food expenses, especially if they are eating at their homeless shelter.

It might be the case that you are suggesting that persons in homeless shelters should be disqualified from receiving food security benefits, because they can rely on the shelter for food, and so they should not receive SNAP funds. I wouldn’t agree with that because some shelters to no offer meals, and I prefer that clients have autonomy, and giving a person $200 to spend on food allows them to enjoy some freedom in making choices about what they eat. Also, if a person is relying on a shelter for their food and has no SNAP money, they became more dependent on their shelter, and less able to strike out on their own, so that is a concern for me.

I am also uncertain about what you mean when you say that persons in shelters receive $200 in SNAP money each month. From your essay, it seems you are saying that even if a housed person spends a single night in a shelter, they could receive the full benefit of SNAP money at a maximum level. It seems to me that the last time I checked, the food security policies did not work this way. When I last checked, food stamps (SNAP) benefits were determined through a complex formula that took into consideration one’s income, the number of dependents in one’s family, and one’s housing arrangement (as well as some other factors, such as one’s disability status and other forms of welfare benefits received). And yes, in such a formula I think it’s reasonable for persons who are designated as homeless (as those who live in a shelter should be designated) would enjoy a slight increase in their benefits because of their homeless situation. I understand why you might argue that homeless people should receive lower benefit levels, because they can have free food at shelters, but I think the program goal is to help clients establish autonomy and independence, and so I am for giving clients a bit more money to use on their own outside the shelter (money they could keep if they left the shelter and found housing in some other situation). Also, persons who are homeless may need to eat more prepared meals if they have no access to a kitchen or cooking equipment. Housed persons can presumably enjoy savings in their food costs by cooking at home.

If homeless shelters provide meals to their clients, that is their decision. Certainly they can choose to not provide meals and let their clients use their SNAP funds to keep themselves from becoming malnourished. Also, isn't it possible for shelters to charge their clients for meals, perhaps using food stamps (SNAP benefits)? In some places people have been using food security welfare to eat in restaurants for years.