Ending Childhood Hunger by 2015

New Data on Hunger in Our States and Metro Areas
Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center

Close to one-fifth of this country’s households in 2009 that they didn’t have enough money to buy needed food at some point in the prior twelve months.  And the problem was even more serious in households with children; close to one-fourth of these homes couldn’t afford enough food. In 82 of the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), 15 percent or more of respondents answered that they did not have enough money to buy needed food at times in the last 12 months. Practically every congressional district in the country had more than a tenth of respondents reporting food hardship. Of the 436 congressional districts (including the District of Columbia), 311 had a food hardship rate of 15 percent or higher.

These troubling statistics are all part of today’s release of the Food Research and Action Center’s (FRAC) new report, “Food Hardship: A Closer Look at Hunger.” For the first time, recent data on food hardship – the inability to afford enough food – are available for every state, all 436 Congressional Districts and for 100 of the country’s largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA).  This is the first report based on a sample size adequate to analyze food hardship data at the MSA and congressional district level. And no report before this has been able to look at food hardship data so close in time to publication.

The report analyzes survey data that were collected by Gallup and provided to us at FRAC. The ability to provide such localized data and such up-to-date data comes from Gallup’s partnership with Healthways. As part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index project, which asks a series of questions on a range of topics including emotional health, physical health, healthy behavior, work environment and access to basic services, more than 530,000 people have been asked since early 2008: “Have there been times in the past twelve months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?”

Anyone who follows the news knows that hunger has been on the rise in recent years, but we now know the extent of hunger in cities and Congressional districts.  This data provides each Member of Congress with the most accurate snapshot of their district and their constituents’ struggles with hunger that has ever been available.

Now that we have these data, it’s time to put them to use. These findings give local, state and federal lawmakers, as well as private and nonprofit organizations, the tools they need to put a broad anti-hunger plan in place.

The President has called for an end to childhood hunger by 2015. FRAC applauds this mission and stands behind this goal. Earlier this year, we laid out a multi-step anti-hunger plan. With today’s report, the need to take action has become more urgent.

Among our recommendations on ways to end childhood hunger – and hunger in general:

• Assure that federal and state governments continue to focus their efforts on boosting the economy and employing tools that especially help low-income workers, such as refundable tax credits and a higher minimum wage.
• Improve the SNAP/ Food Stamp by making benefits more adequate and expanding eligibility.
• Strengthen Child Nutrition Programs, including the school meal programs, child care food, afterschool meals and snacks, and the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which are due to be renewed by Congress this year.
• Ensure all families have access to reasonably priced nutritious foods.  This is an especially urgent need in low-income areas in large cities where good supermarkets often don’t exist.
• Combine and streamline anti-hunger efforts among governments, the private sector and nonprofit organizations at the local, state and federal level.

These are among the most essential strategies we must use to bring down the rates of hunger across the nation.  Click here for the full FRAC plan.

The Gallup-Healthways findings tell a sobering story about how many people, families and communities are struggling to afford enough food to stay healthy.  In a country as powerful and well-off as ours – even in today’s economy – we cannot continue to allow this level of hunger to continue.  Today’s findings are an alarm bell that must not be ignored.

Throughout January and February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will host a series of roundtables and forums that will focus on job creation and economic growth. These jobs roundtables offer anti-hunger advocates an opportunity to promote job creation and investment strategies outlined in FRAC’s recommendations for ending childhood hunger in the U.S. by 2015. Click here to read FRAC’s paper.

Click here for a list of upcoming roundtables, event details, and state contact information.

The roundtables are good venues to explain how important federal nutrition programs are for rural America: they help needy rural school children and adults be ready to learn and work; they provide markets for famers and ranchers who produce food; and they boost sales for rural retailers who redeem program benefits.

To learn more, click here for USDA’s news release on the forums. Contact Ellen Vollinger (evollinger@frac.org) or Jen Adach (jadach@frac.org) if you have any questions.

Picture a nation where all children have enough nutritious food to eat and never worry where they’ll find their next meal. They eat three solid, healthy meals a day, have a couple of snacks, and go to bed without fearing hunger. According to President Obama, who made a campaign pledge to end childhood hunger in the United States by 2015, this is the world he wants to see by six years from now.

The Obama Administration is beginning to put some effort behind this pledge. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is holding a series of listening sessions around the country on ways to achieve the 2015 goal. One of those sessions was recently held here in Oakland, Calif.

Groups and individuals from various sectors, including state agencies, industry and advocacy groups, and service providers showed up and shared ideas on how to end childhood hunger over the next six years. We at the Alameda County Community Food Bank were there to represent the hundreds of thousands of county residents who live with hunger – numbers that are escalating on a monthly basis.

We’ve laid out a number of  that will lead our country down the right path toward ending hunger. The administration and Congress can take a number of steps:

Click here for more on the Calitics Web site.

FRAC is excited that the President has set a goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015, and to launch our new blog focused on achieving that goal.

We are an extraordinarily affluent nation – even today, as we reach what we all hope is the bottom of the recession, but we are a nation that for too long has had too much hunger and food insecurity in the midst of our affluence. Even before the recession began more than 12 million American children were living in households that suffer from hunger or food insecurity. That’s more than 17 percent of all U.S. children.

During the presidential campaign, President Obama pledged to make it a priority to end childhood hunger by 2015. Since being elected, he has signaled his continued support for this goal and his Administration has begun to take important steps to attack poverty and reduce hunger, even as this terrible recession has made the job harder, at least in the short term. We still have a long way to go.

I believe it is realistic to imagine that six years from now, every American child will begin each day secure that she will have enough nutritious food. Six years from now, every family should know where it can turn if it has hit a rough patch and can’t afford that nutritious food.

FRAC has developed a seven-pronged strategy to accomplish this goal.  We think it’s a strong starting point, and we must start now. We invite you to keep a close watch on 2015. In the coming weeks and months, we will post frequently here and have guest postings from other people and groups committed to achieving the 2015 goal. We’ll keep tabs on Capitol Hill and on USDA and other government agencies and blog about critical legislation and administrative steps, including the upcoming reauthorization of the child nutrition programs. We’ll follow 2015 press coverage and share it with you.

This is an important time in our nation and the policy decisions we make now will impact generations of children and families. 2015 will foster conversation and spur ideas on how best to achieve the goal by 2015. Take a look at the summary of FRAC’s 2015 strategy below or read the full paper. I look forward to hearing your comments and working together to end childhood hunger by 2015.

Jim Weill
President of the Food Research and Action Center

Summary of 2015 paper
FRAC’s “Ending Childhood Hunger by 2015: The Essential Strategies for Achieving the President’s Goal” sets out seven essential strategies to achieving that goal. They focus both on improving and expanding the nation’s nutrition programs, and bolstering the economy and strengthening supports for low-income families in order to move more out of poverty, the root cause of hunger in this country.
In brief, the seven strategies are:

• Restore economic growth and create jobs with better wages for lower-income workers.
• Raise the incomes of the lowest-income families.
• Strengthen the SNAP/Food Stamp Program.
• Strengthen Child Nutrition Programs.
• Engage the entire federal government in ending childhood hunger.
• Work with states, localities and nonprofits to expand and improve participation in federal nutrition programs.
• Make sure all families have convenient access to reasonably priced, healthy food.

For the full paper, visit www.endingchildhunger2015.org.