The 2010 Hunger Report

Mr. President,

You have pledged to end child hunger in the United States by 2015, and I want you to know that anti-hunger advocates and religious organizations have pledged their support to help you achieve this goal.

Child hunger in a country as wealthy as ours is scandalous. Approximately one in six U.S. children lives in a household that struggles against hunger, and the situation is even more alarming for children in African American and Hispanic households.

In no group does hunger pose a graver threat than among babies and children younger than three. Brief episodes of hunger can cause lasting damage to a child’s mental and physical development.

Clearly, hungry children are victims of forces beyond their control; the injustice of this is magnified during periods of economic turmoil like the one we’re now experiencing.

Please allow me to offer you some advice on how to make good on your courageous pledge. Hunger is a complex problem. Unfortunately, it cannot be solved by any one program. Taken together, the suggestions below provide a comprehensive set of tools to get the job done.

1. Increase participation in child nutrition programs.

Federal child nutrition programs like the School Lunch and Breakfast programs, WIC,¹ and the Summer Food Service Program are the frontline stand in the fight against child hunger. But too many children who qualify based on their family’s income do not participate in the impressive menu of programs our government has created. It is heartbreaking to think that there are children who forego an entitlement to free or reduced-price school lunch or breakfast because of the stigma of being labeled poor. Half of all children born in the United States qualify for WIC, a testament to how important this program is, but during the critical months of pregnancy when good nutrition is essential to the health of newborns, almost a third of income-eligible women do not participate. Children are especially vulnerable to hunger in the summers, when they are out of school and no longer have a school breakfast or lunch program available. The Summer Food Service Program is by far the weakest of the federal child nutrition programs. For every 100 children who receive free and reduced-price meals during the school year, only 12 participate in a summer food program.²

2. Increase the size of SNAP (formerly the Food Stamp Program) benefits.

Many people don’t realize that half of all SNAP benefits go to children. Although it is rarely described in these terms, SNAP is the largest child nutrition program in the United States. Of USDA’s nutrition programming budget, 62 percent goes to SNAP, while the largest program officially called a child nutrition program—the National School Lunch Program—represents 15 percent of the budget.³ SNAP has been crucial in responding to the rising threat of hunger during the recession, and the temporary improvements Congress and your administration made to the program in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—boosting benefits and reducing administrative burdens—were absolutely the right thing to do. I hope you will consider extending these. Prior to the recession, research showed that the average household exhausted 90 percent of its monthly benefit allotment by the beginning of the third week of the month.⁴ In addition, millions of legal immigrants remain excluded from the program. No one who is in this country legally should be prevented from participating.

3. Make sure that work pays enough for parents to feed their children.

Forty years ago, a minimum-wage job all by itself was enough for one parent working full-time to pull a family of four above the poverty line.⁵ Today, in inflation-adjusted real terms, the value of the minimum wage is 17 percent lower than it was worth then, falling well below what is needed to lift a family of four out of poverty.⁶ Many changes have occurred in the labor market. Some may have been inevitable, but the eroding value of the minimum wage was not inevitable. Rather, it has been the policy of the U.S. government not to raise the wage at the rate of inflation. Between 1996 and 2006, the minimum wage remained frozen at $5.15 an hour. Its recent increase to $7.25 was hardly enough to make up for a decade without an increase. Raising the minimum wage does more than benefit those with minimum-wage jobs. The minimum wage sets a floor but also helps determine the pay of many other workers earning slightly more

4. Expand tax credits to help low-income workers.

The Make Work Pay tax credit and the improvements to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are making a difference in holding off hunger in poor households. I urge you to make these emergency measures permanent. In recent decades, policymakers in Washington have signaled that they will address the inadequacy of low wages through tax credits rather than by increasing the minimum wage. Higher wages are a more sustainable solution to hunger, but without these tax credits—the EITC in particular—the number of hungry children in the United States would be far higher. Making these tax credits permanent is important for another reason. Tax credits are an appendage to earnings, and this appendage will always make up a smaller share of income than wages; as long as wages grow at a rate that is lower than the rising cost of living, then we must ensure that tax credits continue to make up the difference.

5. Expand public housing assistance.

For most families, regardless of income, housing exceeds all other expenses, but for families in poverty, housing is such a burden that it crowds out spending on other necessities, such as food. Half of all low-income households—including both renters and owners—spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing.⁷ Cheaper housing often means living in substandard or unsafe living conditions and/or giving up access to good schools and other services like nearby supermarkets. More housing assistance for low-income families is essential to ending child hunger.

6. Make health care affordable and available to all.

Universal health care is a fundamental part of ending child hunger because the private insurance market is not working for low-income families. Most low-wage jobs do not offer health insurance, and if they do, the cost of the premiums often means that insurance is still out of reach. As long as families are unable to afford health insurance, they will always be at risk of financial ruin. Healthcare costs account for more personal bankruptcies than anything else. Fewer than half of workers in the lowest quintile of income ($20,712 or less) receive employer-sponsored coverage.⁸ The largest share of uninsured people are from low-income working families who earn too much to qualify for public healthcare coverage and too little to afford private insurance. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) may cover children from these families, depending on the state. But a family’s financial condition is never secure as long as the parents are too poor to afford insurance.

7. Increase the availability of child care to low-income working families.

To be able to work, parents of young children need some form of child care. It is dangerous (and illegal) to leave a child without care, yet parents who stay home with children often forego income that is needed to put food on the table. Parents frequently use informal childcare providers, such as family or friends, but not all parents can get such help. Moreover, trained early childhood educators are often a better choice, since the greatest advances in a child’s intellectual development occur in the early years of life. Researchers argue that child care combined with early education can do more to improve the life chances of a child in poverty than any other intervention. The cost of high-quality child care varies significantly across the country. Currently, the poverty threshold for a family of four is $22,025. For a family with one preschool and one school-aged child, the cost of care ranges between $7,000 and $20,000 per year—a staggering amount for a low-income family, especially on top of housing, food, and other expenses.⁹

Stable housing is linked to food security in low-income households.

8. Invest in public transportation and, as needed, subsidize commuting costs.

In the 1920s, transportation accounted for 3 percent of household income. Today, it averages 20 percent.¹⁰ Investing more of the federal transportation budget in public transportation, rather than in building highways (where the bulk of funding now goes), would not only help low-income families with their commuter costs but also serve a larger public good. Transportation accounts for a third of CO2 emissions, with the largest share of these coming from cars.¹¹ We could significantly reduce the emissions that are contributing to global climate change if we reduced the number of workers who commute by car. Depending on location, public transportation may never be an option for some workers, but transportation assistance is still needed. Tax credits or subsidies can encourage low-income families to purchase fuel efficient, reliable vehicles. Transportation costs take up a greater share of low-income families’ budgets not only because they earn less, but because they are more likely to be driving older vehicles that cost more to maintain.

9. Improve access to mainstream financial services in poor neighborhoods.

I urge you to strengthen existing programs that allow community banks, credit unions, and other financial services to take root and flourish in neighborhoods. No one gets ahead when paying down loans with annualized interest rates of 500 percent. Often, low-income families are carrying unsustainable levels of personal debt because they don’t have access to mainstream financial services. In neighborhoods where poverty rates are high, it is easier to find payday lenders and check cashing outlets than banks. On the streets of Washington, DC, less than a mile from the White House, you can see scores of these establishments before you spot the first bank. Across the country, banks have vanished from poor neighborhoods, leaving residents little alternative but to use these loan businesses. The average payday loan customer pays back $800 on a $300 loan.¹² That $500 is a lot to be pulling out of a household food budget that is already stretched. Much more stringent limits should be placed on the interest rates lenders can charge.

10. Provide strong leadership to follow through on the pledge.

Mr. President, your leadership is the most important factor in ending child hunger. Identifying policies that should be improved is the easy part—it takes leadership to help others see that ending child hunger is in everyone’s interest. Americans are good and generous people. Many are unaware that child hunger exists right here in our own country. With your extraordinary gift as a communicator, you can move the public to embrace ending child hunger as their goal too.

Again, I applaud and support you in your pledge to end child hunger in our country.

Rev. James McDonald

Reverend James McDonald is Managing Director for Bread for the World and a Presbyterian minister.