We can reduce risk of food insecurity by investing in America’s children
I never realized as a child that our family was poor. We always had a roof over our heads – a tiny one-bedroom house; we always had coal for the furnace; and we always, always had food on the table. Without my own story of hunger, why have I spent the last 40 years as a “hunger activist” with Bread for the World? I’m not sure, but I do know that you don’t have to be hungry yourself to be devastated when the evening news shows children in wretched poverty. These are children who do go hungry, who may not have a home at all or a furnace that works. Just last week another family died in a house fire trying to keep warm with a space heater in the freezing night.
In all my years of studying hunger issues and legislation, there has been one constant. In boom times and bad times, our country always has a poverty rate of 12 or 13 percent, which means millions of children are at risk for food insecurity - not being able to count on their next meal. Why can’t we change that?
The obvious advice to poor people is, “Get an education, get married, and get a job – a good-paying job with healthcare benefits!” Unfortunately, our economy does not generate enough of those jobs for everyone. Mark Rank, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, reports that 40% of jobs in the United States are low-wage jobs. For decades, manufacturing jobs have gone overseas or been automated, and our economy has produced primarily low-paying, service-sector jobs in retail or fast food, as nurse’s aides, childcare workers and farm workers. It seems to be a permanent feature of our economy – an underclass of impoverished “essential workers.”
We haven’t figured out how to make our economy work for everyone, but we can help children thrive despite their family circumstances. Congress’s response to the COVID crisis addressed both hunger and poverty. The problem of feeding hungry children in the summer when they don’t get school meals now has a solution. The summer Electronic Benefits Transfer program is a debit card that provides $30 per child per month in groceries when they are not in school.
In addition, the expanded Child Tax Credit resulted in a 45% reduction in child poverty. The CTC, which has always had bipartisan support, was increased from $2,000 per child to $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17 and $3,600 for children 5 and under. It included the poorest families (who were previously excluded), and was paid monthly instead of in a lump sum at the end of the year. Research shows that families primarily spent the money on food, utilities, rent, clothing and education (in that order.)
American families, especially young families, are under financial stress. Last century, our country nearly ended poverty among the elderly with Social Security. Today we need to end poverty and hunger among children, whose souls are crushed in the constant battle just to survive. We all pay the price: the cost of poverty is calculated to be $1 trillion per year for our economy. We pay it on the “back end” in education and healthcare costs, homelessness, incarceration, despair and the lost productivity of workers – instead of on the “front end” where the cost of the expanded Child Tax Credit would be about $100 billion per year. Studies of income support programs have shown profoundly positive results – not fewer, but more parents working full time, better health and educational outcomes, and up to a 20% increase in a child’s earnings when they reach adulthood.
No American benefits from condemning millions of our country’s children to the ruin of poverty and hunger. I am asking Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth – please work in a bipartisan way to pass the Summer EBT and the expanded Child Tax Credit as standalone bills. These are life-changing investments in America’s children.
Jane Klopfenstein, Leader, Southern Illinois Bread for the World Chapter