By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns
The US Department of Agriculture highlights how the United States in the last decade, despite increased aggregate wealth, slid back significantly in terms of food insecurity as measure of poverty. With everyone now focused on the unemployment situation, it bears noting that even before the downturn in the economy there had been a large surge in food insecurity nationwide.
The Guardian says:
Food insecurity – defined by the USDA as when "food intake … was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food" – afflicted 14.6% of Americans in 2008. ie, some 50 million people were too poor to guarantee being able to put food on the table.
The table below, also from the Guardian, shows where food insecurity is highest. While much of the distress is concentrated in the South, there are plenty of states in the Southwest and West as well. Maine has the highest food insecurity in the Northeast.
My interpretation of the data goes to income inequality. I see this as evidence that the last decade of growth in the U.S. has not been beneficial for poorer Americans. However, I would go further in saying that the downturn in the U.S. and rising unemployment, bankruptcy and foreclosure in the middle class has made plain that the middle class has also been left behind. While distress amongst poorer Americans is plain from these numbers, the diminished position in the middle class was masked by a surge in debt. This was made plain only as a result of a drop in asset prices.
At present, U.S. policy makers are trying to make this problem go away by reflating an asset bubble, but continued high unemployment is the elephant in the room which higher asset prices can not make disappear.
As for the poor, a related Guardian article gets to the heart of things:
The report said 6.7 million people were defined as having "very low food security" because they regularly lacked sufficient to eat. Among them, 96% reported that the food they bought did not last until they had money to buy more. Nearly all said they could not afford to eat balanced meals. Although few reported that this was a permanent situation throughout the year, 88% said it had occurred in three or more months.
Nearly half reported losing weight because they did not have enough money to buy food.
The number of children living in households where there were shortages of food at times rose by nearly one-third to 17 million. The report says that most parents who did not get enough to eat ensured their offspring received sufficient food but that more than 1 million children still suffered outright hunger.
The worst affected states are in the south with Mississippi having the largest proportion of its population enduring shortages of food followed by Texas and Arkansas. More than half of those affected are minorities, principally black people and Hispanics.
Millions more Americans do not go hungry only because they are so poor they receive government food stamps or rely on handouts from food banks such as Feeding America. In some states, such as West Virginia, one in six of the population is on food stamps.
This is certainly the stuff of depressions more than V-shaped recoveries. The first Guardian article has links to the data for downloading.
Source
Hungry America: food insecurity, state by state – Guardian
Record numbers go hungry in the US – Guardian
51 comments
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What a bunch of Lucky Duckies! Not having to work and getting free food. Sometimes. Those people ought to just eat their bootstraps since they obviously are too lazy to pull themselves up by them.
Yea, that’s right!
They need to read some Ayn Rand so that feeling of the Will to Power, a drive to action and achievement will well up from within.
Hey, it worked for the bankers. Look at their recent tour de force, their unparalleled self-mastery that characterizes the superman and establishes the new ethos.
Stop your sniveling and pick yourself up by the bootstraps, just like the bankers did!
Seriously. I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No! No!
Even more seriously. It’s not about “screwing” the poor. It’s about making sure they get what they deserve, which is misery.
Mey, let’s not forget the the simple driving scamerican dynamic here …
The wealthy ruling elite buy scum bag crooked politicians and have them create the laws that tilt the playing field in their favor thereby denying the masses their god given right to freedom and opportunity.
The scum bag rich in scamerica are not rich because they are brighter and more talented, they are rich because they are immoral gang raping thieves that promote their own adoration. This is a class war — have against have not.
Rich people are elitist slime that should be used to generate electricity for those they have impoverished!
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Cry me a river. One Goldman-Sachs bonus is worth a thousand hungry Mississippians, and throwing endless amounts of money at the economic sector that caused the meltdown is the only route to recovery.
Alex, your sarcasm borders on blasphemy. GS is self-ordained to do God’s work, and according to the gospel of prosperity, one’s net worth is a direct measure of God’s favor. You risk the wrath of divine lightning upon your wicked crown with such sacrilege and heresy.
A key element in the debate about health care reform that no one is talking about is how to provide people with affordable healthy, organic food.
If you are one of the lucky ones to not go hungry, you still face the problem of being under-nutritioned and poisoned with toxic chemicals.
michael pollan is and has been.
unfortunately, no one is listening.
Yep.
I recall little noticed legislation by K-street Delay congress during the Bush years which, at behest of the (mostly) processed food industry, received dramatically watered down federally mandated food labelling requirements. Virtually everything on the shelves, no matter how refined/full of chem preservatives/etc. etc., is indistinguishable from the real healthy stuff.
Tracking of produce orgin… obliterated, a sop to distribution companies allowing them to buy from (at least in the SW/New Mexico) from entirely unrelugated cross border farms. Given dwindling water supply, temptation to recycle grey water increases and in fact has occurred here. And in each instance, months to trace orgin of tainted produce if traced at all.
AFAIC, this has been larger trend in US as a whole: eg. convicing the populace of the value in “personal responsability” and such, using these memes as a moral imperative while those promulgating said memes flat out deceive, then massive advertising to convince US public how good this shit is… at the expense of honest accounting for health considerations.
Disconnect is huge.
Across the board (not just food), the game is sort’a like: “Yes, of course, we are selling you shit. But in this brave new age world of capitalistic free markets nobody has to buy it… we aren’t forcing anyone to eat this crap.”
…
I’m a techie… had some successes, how mid-50’s and work only maybe 20-30 hrs p/week doing contract work. A good part of that has been at Univ of New Mexico (Albuquerque).
Amongst other things, I am consistently shocked by the volume of college age young people I’ve gotten to know on some type of mood-levelling meds. They talk about it in ho-hum fashion, almost like it’s become an accepted, absolutely normal thing… like taking Vitamin C.
Rightly or wrongly, over these recent Bush years/Limbaugh & right wing radio & cable, and especially utterly corrupt K-street congress uttering bull shit every day for 8 yrs… much of this need for meds I attribute to effects of massive mis-information pumped into this kids heads. They have little/no means to sort it out, make distinctions that matter, etc. etc.
It’s not just food. It’s bigger… it’s uncertainty about their future, whether there will be a place for them in our economy, and utter falsehoods they accept as truth regarding state of foreign affairs (ME)… who the “bad guys” are and all that.
As I’ve said elsewhere here recently, as I see it problems on US shores are much bigger than economist’s explanations of micro/macro conditions, or pundits take on ME wars, of “activist judges” and tea party shit…
Our problems have taken root culturally. We’re pumped full of bull shit, and most of public seemingly is w/out means to make necessary distinctions. This stuff has grown from fringe to critical mass… they move things now, rather then exist of periphery.
In a sense, this food thing is holographic microcosm of what’s happened across the society… hologram meaning that, from whatever angle you look, it appears the same.
Not good.
So what?
They have a liquidity problem I guess (my guess is as good as Bernankes me thinks), and besides – they brought this on themselves, watching Faux News, letting Wall St run the government. As long as they don’t revolt NO ONE CARES!
Oderint Dum Metuant
Shouldn’t be any problem about the liquidity. All they have to do is declare themselves a bank holding company and get a 0% loan from Helicopter Ben.
Yea, they ought to be able to scrounge around in some dumpster and come up with some kind of scraps of paper.
They’d surely be worth as much as the paper Bernanke’s loaning the banks trillions on.
I’ve found some of the best organic food in the dumpsters. So long as noone buys it before it spoils, it’s mine!
Try this again when you can point to some thin poor people; at the moment obesity is still the problem.
Poor people are more likely to be fat, therefore no poor people go hungry. Did you also do the actuarial analysis that said CDS’s were solid?
exactly
Whoops, a major error in reporting:
“Food insecurity – defined by the USDA as when “food intake … was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food” – afflicted 14.6% of Americans in 2008″
The correct percentage for those whose “”food intake … was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food” was…
5.7%.
The 14.6% is another category.
See my blog (click on name) for more.
This is still quite a story, with that percentage increasing dramatically in one year from a typical (for many years) 4.1% to 5.7% in 2008.
American schools systems have been eliminating Home Economics from their curriculum. Cooking at home, especially when done together as a family, seems to be more rare in the face of children’s homework, TV, xBox, soccer practice, ballet rehearsal and piano lessons.
While there may be slack in households budgets for food, can we convince parents there is enough time?
Since the article said that due to food stamps no one is actually starving, this unfortunate news should be seen as an opportunity to help correct some of the horrific American eating dysfunctions that are obvious to anyone who visits.
In general, Americans eat too much — especially poor people. And the garbage they eat is expensive and processed. It does not cost all that much to eat well. It does take imagination, some skill, and a strong will to eat well. Cooking is my hobby and I have several cook books themed on peasant food because this kind of food is tasty, healthy, and fun to eat.
Organic food is certainly more expensive–it is all I eat–but it not absolutely crucial to eating well, especially if we are talking about eating on a budget. What is important is buying only basic materials; vegetables, fruits, raw meat, pasta, grains, etc. Bread is really the only manufactured food you should be buying and every effort should be used to find artisanal products. Here in Europe that is probably a little easier than in the States but with a little effort good local products can be found. And for those that can afford it, ordering from a local organic farm is the way to go.
Of course when basic materials are purchased the one thing this does require is more time for preparation. But if people are out of work then this should not be a problem. A few months ago my schedule changed and I started working much more from home and this has opened an opportunity to make many more meals from scratch. For example every Monday I make a big batch of stock. This week it was chicken; I buy a few kilos of chicken necks and then use the carcasses of some chickens that I roast. All in all I would say six litres of high quality stock costs me less than six euros to make. From that base I can make soups; stews, risottos, simple pasta sauces, etc. Cheaper cuts of meat are great cooked slowly in stews. Get used to soaking chick peas, assorted beans, etc and healthy and tasty meals are easily made within a tight budget. On those days when money is really short, Spaghetti aglio e olio (pasta with garlic, olive oil, and red peppers) is tasty and cheap and pretty damn easy to make.
There is a huge amount of slack in most American’s food budget; it is just one more symptom of the epidemic of American overconsumption. The problem is there is also a huge amount of slack in most Americans cooking skills. but as the times get tougher (and they will), Americans are going to have to get smart and downsize with their lowering standard of living. The amazing thing is that, with a little effort, the new downsized American could actually be better than the former supersized one.
It is wrong for children to go hungry but what are we to do with irresponsible people who have children and KNOW they do not have the means to raise them? Clearly such behavior is incompatible with the modern welfare state. Nature use to cull
such fools, today our society encourages them.
” what are we to do with irresponsible people who have children and KNOW they do not have the means to raise them?”
Comments like that are utter nonsense – quite frankly. Look, there may be plenty of people that are “advantaged” by being able to game the system. Fine. Let’s assume this is the case.
But, in no way should this be used as a distraction from the real issue here – namely that poverty is increasing – and it is not doing so because people are encouraged to game the system. Poverty is increasing because those with more political connections can advantage themselves over others to gain disproportionate wealth.
Anyone with even the most basic experience with poverty in America (whether through relatives, their own experiences or otherwise) knows that this is a canard used to promote a philosophical viewpoint – namely that poor people are lazy. i condemn this view in the harshest terms. It is misguided.
People are poor because they don’t have money. If poor people saw concrete ways to enhance their social standing, they would do so.
People are poor because they don’t have money. If poor people saw concrete ways to enhance their social standing, they would do so.
You suggest the poor are blind. Perhaps they are but not by any doing of anyone but themselves. Sticking a needle in your arm or a crackpipe in your mouth does not “lead to hundred dollar plates” nor does acting the fool in school. Yet such behavior is common amongst the underclass just as is having children without any means of supporting them.
You need to watch a little program on BBC riches to rags
See link: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_7981000/7981320.stm)
History show us that if you do not uplift those around you and keep the greater share, you will be visited upon one day or another and your fate will pale compared to the status of poor.
Skippy…Really sangellone I’ve always respected your opinion, but to think the stone age can compete with the iron befuddles me, Knife to a Gun fight, come on. The game of *individual will shall over come* is a fools paradise, propagated by the haves.
In fact try a class divided. This is one of the most requested programs in FRONTLINE’s history. It is about an Iowa schoolteacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience in the meaning of discrimination. This is the story of what she taught the children, and the impact that lesson had on their lives.
She now conducts management classes to the same effect, riveting stuff.
see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html
Skippy…for those unfamiliar with this lovely lady please watch, most enlightened.
“what are we to do with irresponsible people who have children and KNOW they do not have the means to raise them?”
And what are we to do with irresponsible people (cough, GS, cough) who buy CDS’s from companies (cough, AIG, cough) that they should KNOW don’t have the means to pay off? Or who sell mortgages to people who’s incomes they haven’t verified? I know – we’ll get Paulson and Turbo Tim and Helicopter Ben to give them trillions.
And what are we to do with people who can’t predict the future? Some poor schmuck actually thought he had a solid job with enough income to raise a family, but has now been out of work for over a year. Can we get our economic team to loan him a measly billion at 0%?
Yes, there are irresponsible people who have children who they can’t afford. But do you think there’s been a sudden increase in those people, or might the financial crisis have something to do with it?
You’re making the old “undeserving poor” argument against a safety net. And yes there are some such people. But what about the deserving poor? You know, the schmucks who got screwed over by our fabled financial engine of economic growth.
There are poor people because monetary systems give rise to divisions along monetary lines, it’s that simple. Poverty is not genetic, it is a socioeconomic phenomena. Back in “the good old days” vagrancy was a crime with hideous and brutal punishments leading to hanging for repeat offenders. The quaint idea was that the poor were lazy; best to teach them a harsh lesson to put them straight. Amazingly, after three or four DECADES of this, they figured out it was a social problem, not a biological one. That we still even have to debate this today is quite frankly shocking. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
I remember reading about an option for eating on a budget years ago. The recommendation was: Put beef bones in a pressure cooker till they dissolved. I guess the marrow in the bone is quite nutritious, but I’ve not been able to find its nutritional profile in the USDA database.
What a funny load of comments to this obviously bad news about the economy and of people suffering.
It is statistically and mathematically impossible that everyone is well off. Even that everyone is merely middle class. It just can’t happen. You always have people – who through no direct fault of their own – will have to be at the bottom end of the bell curve. And in particular you can’t have the super-rich without a lot more super-poor to support them. Simply for that reason that no man’s or woman’s work is worth that much more than another’s, and if you’re not producing your wealth with your own hands you’re extracting it from others. Imperialism (and globalisation; just a de-nationalised form?) merely moved most of those at the poor end to another country, but it still doesn’t eliminate them at home.
Not that I think this post was about invoking empathy, but rather as yet another indicator that the ‘green shoots’ are anything but, and there is still a very long way to go before we’re all out of this mess.
You’re a big rich country – these people might go hungry but they wont starve. Whatever the reason they’re in that position it’s the big picture you need to look at.
Not to be flippant, there is one product that Americans love that adds greatly to its health problems.
See link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATBl4qH9I54
Skippy…CHEERS!
Brutalize into a corner of diminishing opportunity and then provide cheap injurious escapist anesthesia. Who profits?
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Too this day Clydesdale’s make me thirsty!
Skippy…body by bud.
Idlers and Skivers (Knocking at the Door)
Workers in the US have jobs only so long as they make money for those hiring them. Now that technology and out-sourcing and off-shoring make companies more money than using American workers, those workers are being kicked to the curb.
The poor have always known that no one owes them a job. That truth is starting to be realized by some who were formerly middle class.
On the bright side, it’s also said that no revolution succeeds without the support of the middle class.
You have to be an idiot to believe this data. The poor are the most obese in the country. I live in one of the poorest areas of the United States (high desert Calf.) Walk into any Walmart in this area and you will see what the poor are buying… junk food! This is because they are too lazy and dependent to buy good food at Walmart and cook a good meal for their kids. My observation is that 90% of the poor need to go hungry! Their kids are on their way to stage 1 diabetes. Walk into any area where there are “poor,” and you will see that most if not all have money for tattoos, piercings, pitbull dogs, cigarettes, drugs and alcohol. There is no problem getting WIC or food stamps in Calif. Most the kids in my daughters school get free lunches without any proof of need. This is nothing but propaganda for those in the “help the poor government industries social workers.” You’re a chump if you believe it and your doing the “poor” harm. How are America’s poor getting fatter if they’re going hungry? Why was the equation changed from hunger to “food insecurity?” What the hell does this mean anyway. Most the people who buy this crap have never known poor.
I grew up living most my childhood in a one-room travel trailer in a trailer park. My father was a janitor at the CA highway patrol. We where always clean, always fed with home cooked meals (on an electric skillet), and dad and mom were not drunk, stoned, pierced, tattoo, or MIA. I grew up to become and mechanical engineer with a good job. No thanks to those who want to “help” with more handouts of hard working peoples money, while they put in their 20 years and retire on a fat state government pension.
You make this too easy – all I have to do is recycle my reply to Unbelievable above:
Poor people are more likely to be fat, therefore no poor people go hungry? Surely as a mechanical engineer you should understand statistics better than that.
“I grew up living most my childhood in a one-room travel trailer in a trailer park. … We where always clean, always fed with home cooked meals (on an electric skillet), and dad and mom were not drunk, stoned, pierced, tattoo, or MIA.”
So in your day at least some of the poor were responsible people who tried to take good care of their kids. But nowadays none of them are? If you’re any younger than Methuselah I can assure you that the sweeping generalizations you make about the poor, as though they were all that way, were alive and well. And yet your parents didn’t fit that mold. How is that?
“My father was a janitor at the CA highway patrol.”
Who presumably wasn’t out of work for a year or more due to state budget cuts (or at least he was able to find other work because state unemployment was less than 12%).
Before you give me a lesson on statistics, you should learn to read first.
Poor people are more likely to be fat, therefore no poor people go hungry? Surely as a mechanical engineer you should understand statistics better than that.
Please copy and past out of my post where I said “no poor people go hungry? When did “more likely” become your “no?”
So in your day at least some of the poor were responsible people who tried to take good care of their kids. But nowadays none of them are? If you’re any younger than Methuselah I can assure you that the sweeping generalizations you make about the poor, as though they were all that way, were alive and well. And yet your parents didn’t fit that mold. How is that?
Different generation dumb shit. In sixties. There was not today’s entitlement system that subsidized McDonnlds’s meals while parents get to spend their cash of tats. I suppose you haven’t noticed the increase in such decadent behavior the poor? Sure you haven’t.
Interesting that the state with the most “food insecurity,” Mississippi = 17.4, is also, per the CDC, the most obese state in the nation. If you download the CDC powerpoint presentation on this, you will see that the CDC shows Mississippi as the 1st state to have obesity over 20% per population and is now much higher.
What many comments here miss is that most people who go hungry in this country are minorities, and the ultimate cause of this problem is discrimination and marginalization. The entire “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” is utter nonsense, and reflects a classic example of American stupidity that refuses to go away, even in this 21st Century.
First, obesity is not directly associated with too much eating, rather with unhealthy eating. Studies show that the nations that have embraced McDonald’s style of food are experiencing increased obesity. For instance, France, a nation that did not have an obesity problem, has seen a rise in this problem which is directly correlated with the growing popularity of fast food.
To those here who suggested that obesity is a sign of prosperity, why not try to go on a megadose diet of human growth hormone, and see how obese you get in 6 months. Better yet, why don’t you just eat at Mickey D’s every day for 3 months, and you’ll achieve the same result.
I spend half of my year in the US and the other half in Europe. Food in America is total factory-processed garbage, maxed out on hormones, pesticides, antibiotics, and preservatives of all sorts. And it’s getting worse. In Southern and Eastern Europe you can avoid much of this because most families are still connected to farming, or have family members who still farm. However, to the defense of America, one place in Europe that is even worse that the US is the United Kingdom, where, as Groucho Marx would put it, “The food is terrible, and the portions are small”… and twice as expensive.
Furthermore, one cannot help but notice that the majority of the states in your table above are Bible-belt states, most also being Southern states. It’s yet another example of Southern hypocrisy. These people may go to their Southern Baptist churches three times a week, but they are a disgrace to Christianity. To use their own logic, the fact that their states are also the most backward and the poorest in this country is simply a reflection that God has turned his back on them. Right? How does that logic sound? Well, that’s precisely what they say when they spew out their “pick yourself up from the bootstraps” garbage.
The best decision a black or Hispanic person living in the Bible belt can make for their family is to move to a northern state. Additionally, I do not see a cure for the South’s cancer of the soul anywhere on the horizon.
Vinny G.
Vinny, you bring back the good old days of my youth when the church parking lot was full of trucks with the sticker on the back windshield sayin coon hunter with a stacked gun rack.
Skippy..of course thats raccoon, even had a picture depicting said racoon in crosshairs. Funny though never seen raccoon hunting or heard any one talking about it.
Hey Skippy,
If you go now to the same churches, you’re likely to find their parking lots full of Lexuses, Beemers, and Mercedeses. And they all have gun racks, of course…LOL
Vinny
Vinny, you’re a fucking moron. Do you happen to know any of these people that you’re generalizing about? You make sweeping statements about people you don’t even know and call it truth. Minorities are poor as fuck in the Northern states too, so your bashing of the South has no basis in fact.
Actually, even though Vinny paints with a broad brush, his comments are based in quite a bit of “fact.” For a well researched presentation of the religious demographics, I recommend Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, with special emphasis on the chapter entitled “The United States in a Dixie Cup.”
Now whether Vinny is “bashing” or not I suppose depends on how highly one esteems the theology of conservative Christianity. Phillips also explores how nicely that theology dovetails with the politics of greed and self-centered individualism, but I think perhaps Reinhold Niebuhr and Greg Grandin do a better job at that than Phillips does.
I was born a southerner and also raised in the Southern Baptist Church, and I can tell you that 50 years ago the church was not dominated by a bunch of millionaire preachers, dressed up in pseudo-Nietzsche drag like the current bunch of clerics are.
I went for a little foray and found my self here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfgtcZ0e0Fc&feature=related
Skippy…the farm for the both of them.
WTF: The statistics speak louder than the hypocritical messages we get out of the South. We could easily credit most social problems of this country to the backward mentality of the South that the entire nation has to bend over backward to accommodate.
Vinny
PS — I lived in the South and for 2 years I even went to a Southern Baptist church (with one of those with millionaire preachers DownSouth mentioned), and I saw first hand what I write about here.
READ Appendix A of the report…LEARN how the USDA defines “food insecurity” UNDERSTAND that this is not a serious problem in the United States. Unless of course, you are tasked with creating a mass PERCEPTION of rampant economic insecurity (49 million!!!) — as you can see this part worked very well indeed!
Let’s see… Perhaps we need to enact New Poor Laws! Oh, I forgot, supply-side economics has accomplished much the same thing.
Since the United States is the only country where poor people are fat we should outlaw “fast food” and obesity would likely solve itself. Of course, unemployment would increase…
Couple that with religious fundamentalism – CALVINISM – and you’re poor because you are lazy. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Good fortune implies the good graces of God! What is it you don’t understand?
But what if the “poor” began to eat the “rich”? Would they become leaner and meaner climbing the stairway to heaven?
My family and I plan on donating all monies for XMAS gifts to the local food bank. In fact, I’ve decided that whenever unemployment reaches a certain threshold this will become standard practice. And given the jobless recovery predicted I suspect I will be doing this far into the future. If any of you can do the same please consider doing so. Happy Thanksgiving!
Hungar and food insecurity are not one of our biggest problems, and i believe that there will always be classes there have been in most place through out the world and time nothing we do can change that. We should look at the past to figure out that we can’t really change much for the poor…there will always be people in poverty.