Half of American kids will live in households receiving food stamps before age 20, according to a study reported Monday in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
Although one in five children rely on food stamps for years, many more live in families who turn to food stamps during a short-term crisis, says author Mark Rank of Washington University in St. Louis. He analyzed 30 years of data from the University of Michigan’s Panel Study of Income Dynamics survey.
A small addendum for those of you who are pastors or are involved with ministering to those on such programs – the term “food stamps†will probably remain, but as of October 1, 2008, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAPâ€) became the new name for the federal Food Stamp Program.
I am not against feeding the hungry who cannot, at the moment, provide for themselves or who are in genuine long-term need of food assistance.
However, the government food programs have a reputation for being poorly managed and being subject to abuse by their recipients.
We , our government, has also created political constituencies consisting of people who have/have had the ability to provide for their own nourishment but who prefer to accept hand-outs from those citizens who pay their taxes.
Then there is the question of personal competency when it comes to actually selecting and preparing food. Our local inter-denominational food pantry found that many of its clients did not want to be given canned goods or basic constituents such as dried beans and peas. Either they were inconvenient because they required forethought and effort to use in meal preparation or they simply did not know how to make navy bean soup, pea soup, etc.
My mother was widowed at 38 years of age when my father died at 42 years of age and she raised three sons, four, seven and twelve years old, on a very small income. On Sunday we would have a baked ham. On Monday, we would have fried ham slices and take ham sandwiches to school, on Tuesday we would have scalloped potatos with chunks of ham and take ham sandwiches to school, on Wednesday we would have a rich thick French Canadian pea soup made from the remaining ham and ham bone and would take peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school.
We got by. Without food stamps. But then my mother also worked at being both a provider and a mother. She didn’t have time to blame other people and to feel sorry for herself. She accepted her ‘lot in life’ and got on with her responsibilities. By the way, the jelly/jam in her peanut butter sandwiches came from preserves that she ‘put up’ during the summer.
She went to Jesus last week at the age of 100 years eleven months.
How many of these food stamp kids are also growing up without fathers in the house? And the well-funded gay and lesbian advocates keep telling us their issues are the most important sexuality and relational concerns the church should be addressing …
There is a highly political back-story to food stamps, a program of the US Department of Agriculture. Why USDA and not, much more logically Health and Human Services? Well, for the same reason the the US Forest Service is part of the USDA, rather than Interior.
Food Stamps and the Forest Service garner support for farm-state programs, grants, subsidies, and assorted boondoggles such as the annual $203,000 grant to support the Alabama Peanut Queen festival. Congress Critters from New York or Baltimore are unlikely to support rural subsidies without getting their own dollop. Ditto for places with lots of trees.
For the substance of the article … a second comment, below.
When I was a young man starting out, I had a part time job paying minimum wage. When I found out that I was eligible for food stamps, I resented it deeply. I paid my own rent and utilities, without assistance. I paid for my own groceries, car insurance, etc.
The reason that I resented eligibility for food stamps (which I never took advantage of) was that I knew that I didn’t need them to get by and if I didn’t need them, I was sure that many others did not need them, yet I was having taxes taken from my meager wages that were being used to pay for others to have food stamps at my expense.
This is not an academic exercise for me. I ate $0.25 boxes of macaroni and cheese and $0.10 ramaan noodles. I was creative with tuna fish, eggs, and cheese. I was able to live on my earnings, why could others not do the same? Why were my earnings being attacked to pay for those who refused to work? I observed, first hand, others in my apartment complex that were healthy and able to work, receiving rental assistance, foodstamps, and welfare checks.
The short-term use of food assistance is tremendously important, whether food stamps or food banks. Our local Harvesters Food Bank reports that typical time on direct assistance is usually about two months, after which the recipients are often not seen again because their situation has improved.
Long-term use is usually confined to sub-cultures in which the standard family unit has been pretty much only women and children for a couple of generations. When Granny is 35 and never learned to cook for herself it’s no surprise when her 18-year-old daughter has no idea how to cook beans, rice, vegetables, or even a canned ham for her two kids. Therein lies a tremendous pastoral need.
The predominance of short-term assistance has its own political implications. Many well-meaning people treat “the poor” as an under-class of the [i]permanently[/i] poor. Government studies, however, have shown clearly that something like three-quarters of the people in the lowest economic quintile move into higher quintiles within a decade or so. Perhaps a tenth make it into the upper two quintiles.
Some of this is just normal life-cycle improvement in circumstances. For example the unemployed 26-year-old is poor, but at 36 may well have a good job. What matters is that [i]most[/i] of the poor don’t [i]STAY[/i] poor, at least not for long. The food stamp data demonstrate that reasonably well.
Consequently there are two separate ministry concerns:
a) the long-term poor for whom cultural issues, education, and basic life-skills are paramount for any successful rise out of poverty, and
b) the short-term poor, most of whom have fallen on what are likely to be temporary hard-time, and for whom a “hand out” can actually be a big help.
Speaking as someone who was on food stamps for a short period when I was a very young kid after the early ’80s recession that largely put my father out of work, I am thankful there are emergency systems like that in place for people who honestly need them and are otherwise hard working folk who are just a bit down on their luck. We never took welfare though, as my parents interestingly viewed welfare as charity and wouldn’t go that far because “that was for lazy people.”
I suppose its all in the eye of the beholder as to what is social welfare and what is necessary.
AnglicanFirst — God bless your mother. There ARE saints among us on earth. She is now with the saints in heaven. Probably showing them the proper way to make jam without making it all runny. 🙂
PS And, yes, we do believe in purgatory. But women who raise a family by themselves and also make their own jam go straight to heaven. 🙂