Melissa K. Smith

Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its 2010 annual report on Household Food Security in the United States.  The report had some good news — food insecurity did not increase between 2009 and 2010, despite rising unemployment and poverty rates.  In fact, severe food insecurity even went down over this period.  While need is going up, hunger is not!  What does this mean?  It means that food assistance programs work! 

Food Security is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s measure of hunger.  A household is considered food insecure if they lacked adequate resources to buy food during the last year.  The USDA conducts an annual survey to monitor food security.  Food insecure households report being worried that food would run out, that they could not afford a balanced meal, that they had to cut the size of a meal or skip it all together and that they were hungry but did not eat.  In households with children, many adults skipped or reduced their meals to make sure that their children had enough food. 

Nationally, there was not a significant change in the number of households that were food insecure between 2009 and 2010.  Approximately 17.2 million people, about one in every six households, were food insecure across the U.S. during 2010.  Rates of food insecurity were higher than the national average for select groups.  One in three female-headed households and low-income households below 185 percent of the poverty threshold were food insecure, as were one in four African American and Hispanic households.  Michigan experienced food insecurity at about the same rate as the nation as a whole with 14.7 percent of Michiganders lacking food security in 2010.  Despite being only slightly above the national average, 32 states had lower food insecurity rates than Michigan, highlighting the fact that hunger is still an important concern in the state. 

The USDA administers fifteen different domestic food assistance programs.  Food assistance programs provide benefits to retail, agriculture and food production businesses in addition to food assistance recipients.   The top three federal food programs are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and children (WIC), and the National School Lunch Program.  

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was formerly known as the Food Stamp Program.  SNAP provides monthly benefits to low-income households to purchase food.  Approximately 40 million people in the United States received SNAP benefits in any given month in 2010.  The average benefit was around $130 a month.  In Michigan, the program is known as the Food Assistance Program.  FAP caseloads have doubled over the last few years.  About 1.9 million Michiganders received FAP monthly during Fiscal Year 2011. 

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children is a preventative nutrition program that provides supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant and postpartum women and for infants and children under age five that are determined to be at nutritional risk.   WIC is one of the most important preventative health programs in the nation.  Nationally, approximately 9 million women and children received WIC monthly during 2010, with an average monthly benefit of $42 per person.  In Michigan, more than 300,000 women, infants and children received WIC benefits in 2009.

The National School Lunch Program provides free and reduced lunches at over 100,000 schools and child-care institutions nationwide.  On average, more than 31 million children received lunch daily through the program in 2010.  Children from families with incomes below 130 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible for free lunches and children from households with incomes between 130 and 185 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible to receive reduced-price lunches.  On average, 860,000 Michigan students received free or reduced lunches daily during the 2010 school year. 

The need for food assistance is a primary indicator of an economic depression.  The federal food assistance program is designed to expand and retract with changes in the economy and to provide immediate assistance to those in need.  Families with little to no money can even receive food assistance benefits within a week.  According to the report, in 2010 SNAP provided assistance to 40.9 percent of food insecure households, 32.4 percent of food insecure households received free or reduced-price school lunches and 13.6 percent of the women and children in food insecure households received WIC.  Last year, the U.S. Census Bureau calculated that food assistance benefits helped keep 3.6 million families out of poverty nationwide.   While hunger still exists in Michigan, and more can be done to help families have adequate access to food, it is good to know that we already have systems in place that are making a dent in hunger and helping to keep families out of poverty.

– Melissa Smith

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Categories: Blog: Factually Speaking, Human Services, Uncategorized | Tags: children and families, food assistance, poverty, safety net