With little progress against poverty, U.S. household food insecurity remains above 14%

The prevalence of household food insecurity in the United States remained above 14% in 2013, according to new data released today by USDA's Economic Research Service.

Here is the abstract to today's report:

An estimated 14.3 percent of American households were food insecure at least some time during the year in 2013, meaning they lacked access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The change from 14.5 percent in 2012 was not statistically significant.The prevalence of very low food security was essentially unchanged at 5.6 percent.

Household food insecurity means that some household members at some times of the year experienced food-related hardships (the household respondent gave 3 or more "yes" answers to a set of 18 survey questions about experiences of hardship).

The high rate of household food insecurity represents a major disappointment for U.S. anti-poverty policy. Rates of household food insecurity fell during the economic expansion of the 1990s, stagnated in the early 2000s, and rose dramatically during the financial crisis of the late 2000s. Despite hopes for renewed economic growth and reduced unemployment, these remain very difficult times for low-income Americans.

In previous years, the United States solemnly adopted targets for reducing the prevalence of food insecurity from 12% (the level observed in the mid-1990s) to 6%. As my chart (based on USDA data) shows, this effort to improve U.S. food security has failed. Yet, neither Democrats nor Republicans talk much any more about any substantial realistic strategy for poverty reduction -- with serious objectives, quantitative targets, and implementation steps. Though food assistance is of course important, poverty reduction is the most promising approach to improving household food security in the United States.

New edition of Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat by Janet Poppendieck

Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat is a classic in the history of U.S. food policy, written by sociologist  Janet Poppendieck, focused on the connections between agricultural crisis and food programs for the poor in the Great Depression.

The new edition from the University of California Press, published this month, includes a foreword by Marion Nestle and a delightful new epilogue bringing the story up to date from the book's original publication in the 1980s to the present. And by "the present," I mean the book includes material as recent as the key January 2014 compromise over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provisions new Farm Bill. (In terms of the publishing mechanics, how is this even possible?).

I read the new manuscript last year at the request of the publisher (and recommended republication):

The book is well-written and detailed, making bureaucratic correspondence come alive as lively argument. It has an authoritative and believable voice, while still carrying passion for the plight of the poor and hungry. I knew this already from reading Poppendieck’s more recent books on the emergency food system and on school meals reform. The pig slaughter story will stick in my head permanently now. The use of archival material adds novelty, but the book serves well even digesting and interpreting known topics.

Immediately today I will add this book to my U.S. food policy syllabus and place an order request to my university library.

Bread for the World publishes 2014 Hunger Report

The faith-based anti-hunger advocacy organization Bread for the World today released its 2014 report on Ending Hunger in America.  This organization stands out for its economically sensible poverty-centered approach to thinking about the problem of hunger. 

It is right for such an organization to press for greater generosity in federal nutrition assistance programs (as Step #3 out of 4 steps).  But it also seems wise for Bread for the World to give jobs and education their proper place (as Steps #1 and #2). 

The #1 plank has the tag-line: "The best defense against hunger is a good job."

USDA Under Secretary Kevin Concannon speaks at the Friedman School

Kevin W. Concannon, USDA Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services spoke this month at the Friedman School's weekly Wednesday seminar.  He gave a broad overview of USDA's nutrition assistance programs and nutrition education initiatives.

Kevin W. Concannon has served as President Obama's and Secretary Vilsack's Under Secretary for FNS since July 2009.

He oversees the U.S. Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) which serves 1 in 4 Americans, and has lead responsibilities for promoting healthful diet through the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.

Working in partnership with State and local organizations, FNS oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program; child nutrition programs including National School Lunch, School Breakfast, and Summer Food Service Programs; The Child and Adult Care Food Program; the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); the Commodity Supplemental Food Program; Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations; The Emergency Food Assistance Program; and other nutrition programs.

A video of the presentation and discussion is available from iTunes.

IOM report considers time constraints as part of assessing SNAP benefit adequacy

The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, today released a consensus report on the adequacy of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

The committee that prepared the report was led by Julie Caswell of UMASS Amherst.  Members included Mary Muth, Philip Gleason, Jim Ziliak, Barbara Laraia, Diane Schanzenbach, and others.  The committee had invited me to Washington for a workshop in spring 2012 to give a presentation (.pdf) about the economics of the SNAP benefit formula, the procedure that the federal government uses to assign a benefit amount to each participant household based on its income and other characteristics.

In one notable conclusion of today's report, the committee suggested that the federal government should account for the difficulty low-income families face in finding sufficient time to cook at home.  The implication is that the government could consider increasing SNAP benefits to provide low-income households with sufficient resources to purchase more convenient and easy-to-prepare foods:

Time—USDA-FNS should recognize the cost-time trade-offs involved in procuring and preparing a nutritious diet. The dollar value of the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), with its strong reliance on preparation of meals from basic ingredients, does not account for time constraints faced by most households at all income levels, particularly those with a single working head of household, which necessitate purchasing value-added or prepared foods with a higher cost. USDA-FNS should examine the impact of accounting for cost-time trade-offs, for example, by:

• applying a time adjustment multiplier to the cost of the TFP or reviewing options for adjustments to the current cost of the plan, and

• adjusting the earned income deduction to reflect more accurately time pressures for participants who are working. 

One question is whether encouraging greater food spending on convenient foods would have any health or environmental consequences.  For example, convenience foods tend on average to have more sodium and more packaging than their traditional counterparts.

Clearly, an increased benefit to allow for convenience foods would be a special boon for highly time-constrained households -- think for example of the dreadfully tight time budget for a low-income working single parent.  Yet, many other low-income SNAP participants are retired, or live in households that include a non-working adult.

Some low-income households are able to -- and even want to -- cook at home.  For these households, it might be counter-productive to increase the maximum benefit to a level based on the price of expensive convenience foods, while simultaneously forbidding the households to economize on food and use the savings for non-food needs such as housing and transportation.

While you're thinking this over, I thought it would be helpful to conclude with some real data from the American Time Use Survey for 2011.  Most of the leisure time segment at all education levels is for television and other screen-time recreation. Source: American Time Use Survey. Note: the amount of work time appears smaller than you may expect, because the data include both weekdays and weekends, averaged for working and non-working persons aged 15 and older.

SNAP benefits surpass 10% of all grocery spending

In 2010, for the first time, SNAP benefits appear to have surpassed 10% of all grocery spending.

This seems to me like a significant threshold.  The program formerly known as food stamps is not just an important part of the safety net.  It plays a big role in the U.S. retail economy more generally.  It should be a national priority to seek economic growth of the sort that reaches all the way to the low-wage labor market.  The last time we had that type of poverty-reducing economic growth for a sustained period was the late 1990s.

I provide more detail about recent program trends in "The New Normal: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (gated)," published this week in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE).  The paper came out of a lively conference session, organized by Benjamin Senauer and including papers by himself and Mark Rosegrant, Mike Boehlje, Brent Gloy, Jason Henderson, and Tim Beatty.

This figure compares administrative data on SNAP benefits to USDA's two data series on aggregate food spending.  Depending on the measure of food spending used, SNAP now represents 10% to 17% of the food retail economy.

Figure 4.

Total SNAP benefits, as a percentage of food at-home sales in food stores and in total, 1981–2010

Author's computation based on USDA/FNS annual SNAP data (converted from fiscal year to calendar year by interpolation) and USDA/ERS annual national food spending data by calendar year.