MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-07-14 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] COVID-19 and food shortages II
|
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/05/06/the-covid-19-crisis-has-already-left-too-many-children-hungry-in-america/
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/05/06/the-covid-19-crisis-has-already-left-too-many-children-hungry-in-america/
brookings.edu
The COVID-19 crisis has already left too many children hungry in America
Lauren Bauer
10-12 minutes
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity has increased
in the United States. This is particularly true for households with
young children.
I document new evidence from two nationally representative surveys that
were initiated to provide up-to-date estimates of the consequences of
the COVID-19 pandemic, including the incidence of food insecurity. Food
insecurity occurs when a household has difficulty providing enough food
due to a lack of resources.
The COVID Impact Survey and The Hamilton Project/Future of the Middle
Class Initiative Survey of Mothers with Young Children asked validated
questions taken from the U.S. Department of Agricultures (USDA) food
security questionnaire in late April 2020.[i] Households and children
are considered food insecure if the respondent indicates the following
statements were often or sometimes true:
The food we bought just didnt last and we didnt have enough money to
get more.
The children in my household were not eating enough because we
just couldnt afford enough food.
To compare April 2020 estimates of food insecurity with
statistics from earlier time points, I use the same questions
listed above to replicate these results with the Current
Population Survey Food Security Supplement (FSS), the source of
USDAs official food insecurity statistics.[ii]
Figure 1 illustrates the high levels of food insecurity observed
in the COVID Impact Survey and in the Survey of Mothers with
Young Children. By the end of April, more than one in five
households in the United States, and two in five households with
mothers with children 12 and under, were food insecure. In
almost one in five households of mothers with children age 12
and under, the children were experiencing food insecurity.
FIgure 1
Rates of food insecurity observed in April 2020 are also
meaningfully higher than at any point for which there is
comparable data (2001 to 2018; Figure 2). Looking over time,
particularly to the relatively small increase in child food
insecurity during the Great Recession, it is clear that young
children are experiencing food insecurity to an extent
unprecedented in modern times.
Figure 2
Food Insecurity Has Deteriorated More among Households with
Children
In the Survey of Mothers with Young Children, 17.4 percent of
mothers with children ages 12 and under reported that since the
pandemic started, the children in my household were not eating
enough because we just couldnt afford enough food. Of those
mothers, 3.4 percent reported that it was often the case that
their children were not eating enough due to a lack of resources
since the coronavirus pandemic began.
By comparison, in the 2018 FSS, 3.1 percent of mothers with a
child age 12 and under reported that their children were not
eating enough because they could not afford enough food ever in
the past twelve months. The incidence of hardship among children
as measured by responses to this question has increased 460
percent.
But responses to this question alone do not fully capture child
food insecurity. To estimate food insecurity, the USDA
aggregates a battery of questions on access to food from the
Current Population Survey. In total for 2018, 7.4 percent of
mothers with children under the age of 12 had food insecure
children in their household, more than double the share who said
that the children in their household were not eating enough
because they couldnt afford enough food (3.1 percent). If the
ratio between this single question and the overall measure of
child food insecurity were to continue to hold today, 17.4
percent children not eating enough would translate into more
than a third of children experiencing food insecurity.
The Survey of Mothers with Young Children found that 40.9
percent of mothers with children ages 12 and under reported
household food insecurity since the onset of the COVID-19
pandemic. This is higher than the rate reported by all
respondents with children under twelve in the COVID Impact
Survey (34.4 percent) but the same as women 1859 living with a
child 12 and under (39.2 percent.) In 2018, 15.1 percent of
mothers with children ages 12 and under affirmatively answered
this question in the FSS, slightly more than the 14.5 percent
that were food insecure by the complete survey. The share of
mothers with children 12 and under reporting that the food that
they bought did not last has increased 170 percent.
Food insecurity in households with children under 18 has
increased by about 130 percent from 2018 to today. Using the
COVID Impact Survey, I find that 34.5 percent of households with
a child 18 and under were food insecure as of late April 2020.
On this single question (the food we bought didnt last) in the
2018 FSS, 14.7 percent of households with children 18 and under
affirmatively answered this question; this value is slightly
higher than the overall rate of food insecurity among households
with children 18 and under for that year.
High levels of food insecurity are not just a problem of
households with children. Prior to the crisis, in 2018, 11.1
percent of households were food insecure and 12.2 percent of
households answered the single question in the battery
affirmatively. The Urban Institutes Health Reform Monitoring
Survey, in the field from March 25 to April 10, used the
six-question short form food insecurity module and found that
21.9 percent of households with nonelderly adults were food
insecure. By late April 2020, 22.7 percent of households
reported in the COVID Impact Survey not having sufficient
resources to buy more food when the food that they purchased
didnt last. Overall rates of household food insecurity have
effectively doubled.
Families Need More Resources to Handle these Material Hardships
Policymakers must act to protect the health and well-being of
the American people, especially children.
Luckily, food insecurity is an unusual policy challenge in that
it recommends a clear solution. To reduce the number of people,
including children, who have insufficient food due to a lack of
resources, policymakers can supply the resources.
To increase food security, economic security, and economic
stimulus, Congress should increase the generosity of food
security programs immediately and ensure that benefits levels
stay elevated consistent with economic data. Governors should
work with USDA to implement these programs. Specifically:
Increase maximum Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp program) benefits by at least 15
percent and double the minimum benefit;
Provide SNAP emergency allotments, authorized under Families
First, to those households that are eligible to receive the
maximum level of benefits (more than 5 million children
reside in these households and they have received no
additional SNAP benefits during this crisis);
Extend Pandemic-EBT through this summer and through at
least the end of the 2020-2021 school year to ensure
there are sufficient resources to purchase food in the
event of ongoing schooling disruptions (Pandemic-EBT is
a new program which provides the value of school meals
as a grocery voucher to eligible families when schools
are closed, a little more than $100 per child per
month);
Support families with children ages 5 and under
through an additional SNAP multiplier or by
broadening eligibility for Pandemic-EBT; and,
Suspend SNAP work requirements for students and
sustain the ABAWD SNAP work requirement
suspension.
At the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis,
Diane Schanzenbach and I called for at least a
15 percent benefit increase to SNAP. Evidence
presented in this piece reiterates that a 15
percent increase to SNAP should be the floor.
New nationally representative surveys fielded
since the pandemic began show that rates of food
insecurity overall, among households with
children, and among children themselves are
higher than they have ever been on record. Food
insecurity represents an urgent matter for
policymakers in the capitol and in state houses
across the country. Food security programs,
centrally SNAP and Pandemic-EBT, must be
strengthened and expanded immediately.
[i] The COVID Impact Survey is a nationally
representative survey conducted by NORC at the
University of Chicago on behalf of the Data
Foundation; it uses the AmeriSpeak panel and was
in the field from April 20 to April 26, 2020.
The Hamilton Project and the Future of the
Middle Class Initiative, both affiliates of the
Brookings Institution, conducted a nationally
representative survey of mothers with children
ages 12 and under using SurveyMonkey from April
27 to April 28, 2020. Technical documentation
for the COVID Impact Survey can be found here.
The Survey of Mothers with Young Children was
developed by Lauren Bauer and Richard Reeves;
Katherine Guyot and Emily Moss contributed
substantially to the development of the survey
and we acknowledge the contributions of The
Hamilton Project, Future of Middle Class
Initiative, and Economic Studies staff at the
Brookings Institution. Both surveys used an
iterative raking procedure to adjust the
surveyed data to match demographic weighting
variables obtained from the 2020 Current
Population Survey. The COVID Impact Survey was
weighted to reflect the U.S. population 18 and
over while the Survey of Mothers with Young
Children was weighted to reflect the population
of mothers with at least one of their own
children age 12 and under in their household.
Additional technical documentation regarding the
Survey of Mothers with Young Children is
available from the author.
[ii] While this is a cleaner approach than
comparisons to the complete food insecurity
battery, the food insecurity time period about
which the three surveys ask are each different.
I have presented the most conservative estimates
throughout this piece, comparing affirmative
responses on single questions from the food
insecurity battery for the last twelve months
(FSS), the last 30 days (COVID Impact Study),
and since the coronavirus pandemic began (Survey
of Mothers with Young Children). Additional
analyses are available from the author.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
_______________________________________________
Hangout mailing list
Hangout-at-nylxs.com
http://lists.mrbrklyn.com/mailman/listinfo/hangout
|
|
