1 in 7 Americans Affected by Food Insecurity

Ed Harrison of Credit Writedowns (via The Guardian) details a disturbing trend:

The US Department of Agriculture highlights how the United States in the last decade, despite increased aggregate wealth, slid back significantly in terms of food insecurity as measure of poverty. With everyone now focused on the unemployment situation, it bears noting that even before the downturn in the economy there had been a large surge in food insecurity nationwide.

What is food insecurity?

Food insecurity - defined by the USDA as when "food intake … was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food" - afflicted 14.6% of Americans in 2008. i.e., some 50 million people were too poor to guarantee being able to put food on the table.

Only three of the worst 17 states in terms of food insecurity showed an improvement over the past decade and my guess is things have gotten a whole lot worse.



Lets realize what has changed since 2008. Back then, the percent of TOTAL people under or unemployed (i.e. U-6) was 5.5% LESS than it is now. Even then, 14.6% Americans were affected by food insecurity (that is one in less than 7 people THEN).

Back to Ed:

My interpretation of the data goes to income inequality. I see this as evidence that the last decade of growth in the U.S. has not been beneficial for poorer Americans. However, I would go further in saying that the downturn in the U.S. and rising unemployment, bankruptcy and foreclosure in the middle class has made plain that the middle class has also been left behind.

I'd go further. It hasn't only been the middle class that hasn't shared in the wealth creation... HARDLY ANYONE outside of the uber-rich have.

Source: The Guardian

Income Inequality in Chart Form...

Why is this the case? A brief post by Will Wilkenson makes a compelling explanation... voters.

Americans who claim to be concerned about income inequality has risen (as income inequality has risen), support for redistributive programs has been more or less constant. What you see instead is increased support for educational reform, suggesting a widespread belief that the problem worth worrying about is the ability of people toward the bottom to gain the skills they need to be successful, not the fact that some small percentage of people are becoming really fantastically rich.

People often wonder why income inequality is so much higher in the U.S. than in other rich liberal democracies. In a nutshell, the preferences of American voters is why.

Source: Census (HT Barry)

Did the Housing Bubble Hide the (Already Increased) Level of Poverty?

The Brookings Institute takes a look at concentrated working poverty:

The study defines the concentrated working poverty rate as the share of low-income tax filers (those receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC) living in communities where at least 40% of all filers receive the EITC.

The report shows that of the 58 large metropolitan areas studied, 34 experienced increased rates of concentrated working poverty between 1999 and 2005. Many of those metro areas, including Rochester, Detroit and Cleveland, are located in older industrial regions in the Midwest and Northeast. Western metropolitan areas, on the other hand, saw a steep drop of 42% in the number of EITC recipients living in high-working-poverty communities.

Please note that the data is somewhat (in fact more than somewhat) stale. However, there are a few things I would like to point out.

• Many of those cities showing a decrease in poverty were in the heart of the subprime fueled housing bubble (think Southern California, Arizona, and Florida)
• Even with that bubble that benefited many poverty stricken cities (enabled housing opportunities / created jobs) ~60% of cities experienced an increase in poverty from 1999-2005
• Most gains directly related to this housing bubble have already reversed
  

Source: Brookings Institute