Food Stamps: Old stereotypes no longer true

September 17, 2007

The Times Argus
By Mel Huff

BARRE – Last week, Philene Taormina and her Montpelier family voluntarily spent no more than $1 per person per meal on food – the average Food Stamp benefit – to raise awareness of what it's like to live on Food Stamps. They have been blogging about their experiences on The Times Argus Web site at http://www.timesargus.com/.

Across the nation, churches, food advocacy groups and civic leaders have been trying to live on the Food Stamp allotment, taking what's called the "Food Stamp Challenge" to mark the 30th anniversary of the Federal Food Stamp Act of 1977, which created the nation's hunger safety net.

Other activists been taken up the Food Stamp Challenge to draw attention to the federal Farm Bill, which contains the nutrition title that includes the Food Stamp program and is up for reauthorization this year.

The program was envisioned as a way of enabling poor families to get a nutritious diet by buying food at grocery stores, rather than through receiving public commodities. Today, the program's name is misleading, since the paper coupons have been replaced by Electronic Benefits Transfer cards, which look like credit cards.

Despite the Food Stamp program's success at directing nutritional support to the most vulnerable – more than 90 percent of benefits go to low-income households with children or an elderly or disabled member – advocates argue the program is not widely understood. They say the continued stigma attached to the program keeps many people who are eligible and need its support from using it. (At a basketball game in Chittenden County last year, fans of one team yelled "Food Stamps" at the visiting team, whom they saw as coming from a town poorer than theirs.)

Renée Richardson, director of the state's food and nutrition programs, is dismayed by such attitudes toward Food Stamp recipients. "I just feel this is such a critically important program for people in Vermont that it breaks my heart when people denigrate the program and denigrate people on the program. 'Food is the first best medicine,'" she says, quoting a slogan. "If you have good food, it helps you to be heathy, and if you're healthy, you don't have to rely so much on the health care system."

Those who use food stamps and those who try to all those eligible participate know there are stereotypes that have to be overcome, that recipients are lazy and don't work or could pay for their food with their income. But the facts and figures reveal the considerable diversity of the need and how the benefits are used.

In 2006, the Food Stamp program brought $54.68 million into the state. (The federal government pays the entire amount of the benefits and half the cost of administering the program. The state picks up the other half.) The economic effect of Food Stamps spreads beyond the recipients, Richardson observes. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, each Food Stamp dollar generates $1.84 in economic activity, providing a stimulus of $101 million to the Vermont economy.

Although the Food Stamp program is perceived by some as too generous, Food Stamp eligibility limits are, in fact, low. Only families with gross incomes under 130 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines are eligible for benefits, unless they have elderly or disabled members. And all families must have net incomes below 100 percent of poverty – that's $17,170 for a mother and two children. Nationally, 38.4 percent of Food Stamp families have gross incomes at (or below) half the poverty line, according to the Food Research and Action Center.

Another stereotype casts Food Stamp recipients as slackers, although a significant number of Vermont Food Stamp recipients – about 28 percent – have some earned income; they are either self-employed or work for others. (The average hourly wage for a head of household is $9.55.) Also, more than a fifth of Vermonters who use Food Stamps are disabled.

The Food Stamp Program is "means tested," so the amount that a family receives goes down as its income goes up; the intent is for Food Stamps to supplement families' food budgets. In July, the average monthly benefit for Vermonters was $175 per household; the average household had 2.4 members.

One of the Food Stamp program's most critical roles is safeguarding the health of low-income children through enabling them to have an adequate diet. Food Stamps provide more nutritional support to children than all other child nutrition programs combined. In Vermont, about 80 percent of Food Stamp benefits go to households with children, and children make up the largest group of recipients: More than 38 percent of the 50,000 Vermonters who receive Food Stamps are children.

Food Stamps are especially important to Vermont because of the growing number of children who live in poverty. Between 2004 and 2005, Vermont saw the greatest increase in child poverty in the nation, from 11.7 percent to 15.4 percent, according to the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger.

A network of pediatricians and public health specialists who conduct research on the relationship between nutrition and the health of low-income children – the Children's Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program, or C-SNAP – found that "children in food insecure homes are approximately twice as likely to suffer poor health and one-third more likely to be hospitalized, because poor nutrition can increase their risk of contracting illnesses and compromise their immune systems."

("Food insecurity" as defined by the United States Department of Agriculture means "limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.")

Vermont's Food Stamp program is particularly efficient, both in its administration and its success in signing up eligible participants. This summer the federal government gave the Agency of Human Services a check for $268,010 for eliminating denial of benefits to eligible families.(The mistake rate went from 5.8 percent in 2005 to zero.)

Richardson said that about 73 percent of eligible families now receive Food Stamps – that compares to 60 percent nationally – and 83 percent of households under 100 percent of poverty participate in the Food Stamp Program. Richardson is planning to use the federal award to find and sign up more people who are eligible for benefits but don't receive them.

Today, the Food Stamp program is limited by outdated benefit levels, deductions and caps on assets, some unchanged since the 1970s. Richardson notes that Food Stamp allotments are based on the expectation that families will spent about 30 percent of their disposable income on food. She questions "whether they really have 30 percent to spend, since disposable income for most of us – and especially low-income households – has eroded due to increases costs for food and spikes in housing costs (rent, heating fuel, utilities) and gasoline. Folks with less disposable income may be spending closer to 50 percent on food, leaving even less money for emergencies."

Richardson hopes to see Food Stamp benefits raised when the Farm Bill is reauthorized. "More food purchasing power in this time of high fuel prices and housing costs would help food stamp recipients not only eat better but stay healthier and more engaged at school and at work," she said.

She would also like to see the asset cap for the elderly and disabled raised to $5,000 from the current maximum of $3,000. The low cap disqualifies many elderly people who have low incomes but whose savings eliminate them from the program. "These families are vulnerable to high prescription costs, illness and other unexpected financial drains. It is unfortunate that they cannot have more of a cushion to fall back on without losing critical food support," she said.

Richardson observed that unrealistically low benefits and asset caps "can put pressure on the emergency food distribution network."

That is exactly what's happening, said Doug O'Brien, chief executive officer of the Vermont Foodbank, the private charitable organization that distributes food to local pantries and soup kitchens.

In 2006, the Foodbank commissioned a study that looked at clients' participation in the Food Stamp program. They found that more than half (51.4 percent) of food shelf clients received Food Stamps, but that the benefits lasted on average only two and a half weeks. That, said O'Brien, "puts pressure on the food shelf or foodbank to make up the difference."

The study also revealed that nearly a third of clients with incomes of 130 percent of poverty or less hadn't applied for Food Stamps because they didn't think they were eligible.

"Many of those families end up turning to local food shelves and agencies of the foodbank," O'Brien said, "so there's an emerging partnership between the Vermont Agency of Human Services and the Vermont Foodbank to help get more people enrolled." He suggested authorizing food shelves to help people apply for Food Stamps.

"We want to get as many of those people on Food Stamps as we possibly can," he said. "We simply cannot provide the amount of food assistance that the Food Stamp program does. We're a complement to that program; we're not a replacement for it. We need to be that last line of defense against hunger. But the first line really is the Food Stamp program."

O'Brien noted that the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf has seen a 20 percent increase in families seeking food over the past year and that the Brattleboro food shelf has reported 28 new homeless families seeking food. He calls the reports "out of the norm for late summer and early fall," and says the increased demand "makes a very strong argument for buttressing this cornerstone program (Food Stamps), that more than any other has reduced hunger and malnutrition in this country."

O'Brien echoes Richardson's recommendation for revising upward Food Stamp benefit and asset levels. He notes that the Farm Bill pending in the Senate would raise the minimum benefit from $10, a figure he calls "egregious" and "stingy," to $25 and index it to inflation.

"There's a universal agreement among the private sector charities that do hunger relief and the public sector that administers (the Food Stamp) program that we all want to do better, because it doesn't serve the public good to have this benefit meager and difficult to attain. The private sector can't do it – can't be a replacement. We're not big enough," he declared.

For information on the Food Stamp program, go to: http://www.vermontfoodhelp.com/

To see a video on the origins of the Food Stamp program: http://www.cbpp.org/foodstamp-video.htm

WARNING: This video has graphic images of child hunger.

September 17, 2007

Press Room