Hunger Is America’s Most Curable Ailment

In November, an article in Reader’s Digest asked, “Is there really hunger in America?” and then assured us that there is not. A few weeks later, President Reagan pocket-vetoed a bill, passed unanimously by the Senate and 311 to 84 by the House, to establish a comprehensive nutrition monitoring system that would help document the extent of hunger in America.

Should one weep or laugh?

The article asserted, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that the idea of widespread hunger in America is a myth concocted by hunger activists. And the Reagan Administration, whose spokesmen have sometimes dismissed evidence of hunger as “anecdotal,” killed the bill that would have made possible scientific data-gathering to determine more precisely how many of us in this country are hungry.

The nutrition monitoring bill is needed, as Congress knows, because we cannot now establish the exact scope and severity of hunger. The bill would have required coordination of current scattered nutrition monitoring efforts and supplemented that with additional surveys. The information obtained would replace a certain amount of guesswork with firmer data and lay the groundwork for remedial legislation. Isn’t it strange that those who complain that we lack solid evidence about hunger should block efforts to get it?

Meanwhile, the evidence that we already have points to the certainty that hunger in the United States is widespread.

In 1985, the Physicians’ Task Force on Hunger in America estimated that 20 million Americans go without adequate food two days or more each month. Critics dismissed this estimate as drawn from poverty statistics, a partly correct observation. Although poverty statistics by themselves do not document hunger, in combination with more direct evidence they make reasonable estimates possible. The task force used that combination. Currently 32 million people in this country fall below the poverty line, 6 million more than during the 1970s. More than 12 million of them live on less than half the poverty-line figure--that’s half of $11,650 a year for a family of four. For 14 million poor people who do not get food stamps, and for many who do, it is exceedingly difficult and often impossible to pay fixed costs and still maintain an adequate diet. The deep cuts in assistance programs in the early 1980s, along with declining incomes for the working poor, have forced millions of people into the position of having to beg for food.

The 1985 Hunger Watch report for Bread for the World, based on data gathered in 36 localities across the country, confirmed the Physicians’ Task Force estimate. So did a 1987 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. A 1988 study based on extensive interviews of poor people in the state of Washington was released a few weeks ago by the Food Research and Action Center. It concluded that “2 million to 5 million children in this country could now have a serious hunger problem.”

As further evidence, private emergency food centers have multiplied throughout the nation during the 1980s in response to growing need. For example, New York City had 31 food pantries in 1981; now it has more than 600. This means that people who need help are being adequately fed, according to the Reader’s Digest article (condensed from one that appeared in Insight magazine). Not so, say volunteers who run the soup kitchens and food pantries, and the poor themselves. The 1985 Hunger Watch survey reported that “voluntary agencies are shown to be staggering under the burden of caseloads totally inappropriate to their resources. . . . Emergency providers are inundated with additional clients at the end of each month who have exhausted their food stamps, WIC (the federally funded Women, Infants and Children nutrition program) and other public assistance benefits.” Consider Erie, Pa., which has one of the finest emergency food networks in the country. An independent study done by a private firm last year for the United Way and the Erie Community Food Bank reported that “66% of those served still have inadequate food resources” and forsake meals during the month; that’s 8.8% of the population of Erie County.

“Bumper crop of hunger harvested in heartland,” was the headline on a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, which focused on rural America: “Reliable statistics are scarce, but a recent study by the Missouri Assn. for Social Welfare estimated that 420,000 Missourians suffer from hunger, a problem that agency director Sara Barwinski said is at least as bad in rural areas as in the inner city.”

The list goes on. Bishop John Ricard of Baltimore, testifying for the U.S. Catholic Conference, told a congressional committee earlier this year that Catholic agencies and churches throughout the country report the same message: The number of hungry people is increasing, and despite heroic efforts, the churches cannot meet the need. “Our efforts cannot and should not substitute for just public policies and effective programs to meet the needs of the hungry,” the bishop said. He added that the dramatic increase in food and financial assistance by churches and other private agencies “should not be misread as a sign of success for voluntarism, but rather a desperate attempt to feed hungry people when others have abandoned their responsibility.”

We can and should more accurately measure the nature and extent of hunger in America. More important, we should end it. If President-elect Bush truly wants “a kinder, gentler nation,” there would be no better place to begin than to challenge Congress and the nation to do just that.