And yet, when it comes to the number of Americans who go hungry, it’s almost like the recovery never happened. The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food security as "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life,” and in 2006, the year before the housing market stumbled, the USDA estimated that fewer than 10.9 percent of American households were food insecure. By 2009, that figure had spiked to 14.7 percent. And now? As of 2014, the most recent year on record, 14 percent of all American households are not food secure. That’s approximately 17.4 million homes across the United States, populated with more than 48 million hungry people. By the time the USDA reports its 2016 figures in September 2017, new food-stamp restrictions could make that number higher. [...]
As a result, in one of the richest countries that has ever existed, about 15 percent of the population faces down bare cupboards and empty refrigerators on a routine basis. That fact alone meets any reasonable definition of the word “crisis,” but it is rarely treated like one. In a lot of states, benign neglect is the most that hungry Americans can expect from their government. What they get instead is usually worse: new restrictions on food-stamp eligibility, in the form of a reimposition of work requirements, mandatory drug testing, and so on. [...]
The Farm Bill and its fallout epitomize post-recession hunger policy. In the face of widespread hunger and federal budget cuts, some states try to mitigate the crisis with whatever policy levers are available. Meanwhile, others do nothing—or worse. For now, at least, state-level food-stamp policies range from inadequate to disastrous.
No comments:
Post a Comment