The whole notion of welfare and assistance is relatively new in American history. The twentieth century was the first to feature the idea that the government would help its people deal with poverty in any material way; it was the horrors of the Great Depression that showed the government that a hungry public was a threat to overall safety and order, and that such things as food and shelter were closer to rights than privileges. Especially in an economic period when so many companies are downsizing, it is important that people have access to the resources they need so that they can weather times of emergency and get back on their feet. The era of governments allowing the poor to struggle and to starve is just as outdated as writing with a quill pen that has to be dipped in an ink bottle. Food stamps represent a necessary tool to help people to escape from the emergency circumstances of sudden unemployment and poverty, so that they can right themselves and become productive once more.
In the United States, the official name for the “food stamp” program is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Currently, it serves approximately 46 million people within around 22 million households. Each household receives a debit card that allows the residents to purchase food each month. Eligibility includes people who work at jobs with low wages, people who are unemployed, and even people who are on the fixed incomes that come through such benefit programs as Social Security (Dean). In 2010, the program was credited with keeping 5 million people from falling below the federal poverty line and made life easier for millions of others who were already below the poverty line. In contrast with many federal programs out there, SNAP has an excellent reputation for efficient use of funding. In 2010, 97 percent of the funds that SNAP sent out went to eligible households in the correct amounts. Even though the recession that began in 2008 has sent the SNAP membership rolls skyrocketing, those efficiency numbers have remained unchanged – and have even slightly improved (Dean).
Unemployment is not a short-term feature of the current recession in America. Currently, 43 percent of all of the unemployed have been out of work for at least six months. This is the highest that this percentage has been since World War II; in 1983, the economy saw the previous high, which was only 26 percent (Dean). What makes long-term unemployment so suitable for SNAP is that when one is out of work for such a long period of time, one depletes one’s savings and other resources, and so there are few benefits left once unemployment runs out. Matters can become especially dire for senior citizens: in Texas, for example, people between the ages of 60 and 64 represent the fastest-growing segment of the population that is receiving food stamps. This total has jumped to 85,000 – a 106 percent increase for that same age group over 2005 (Horswell and Lee). Even in a strong job market, the elderly can have a difficult time finding employment, as many potential employer see people in their 60’s and 70’s as potential liabilities, for such reasons as limited physical ability to a likeliness to be sick more often – even to the threat they may pose to the health insurance pool. Paulette Lanius, a Texas food stamp recipient who is currently 64 years old and is on food stamps, recently went to apply for a position at a frozen yogurt store. She was apprehensive about her chances, though, saying “They’ll probably look at the old salary list on my resume and laugh. Employers look at people like me and think we’ll only work a couple years longer which is not true” (Horswell and Lee). This generation has received the nickname of the “sandwich generation,” because many of them are supporting grown children, who have lost jobs and returned home, as well as aging parents.
There are those who think that food stamp use will decline as soon as the economy turns around and unemployment drops, but that may just not be the case. For example, the total unemployed fell from 15.4 million in October, 2009, to 13.1 million in December, 2011. However, 2011 featured the highest enrollment ever in food stamp rolls. There are several reasons for this; the first is that more people who are currently trapped in jobs with low wages are getting onto food stamp assistance for the first time (Bjerga). The television documentary “30 Days” featured as one of their projects a couple that agreed to live for 30 days on the minimum-wage income of both people. They walked away from higher paying jobs for a month to take part in the documentary, just to see what it actually was like to live on minimum wage. They quickly found that, even with a very ascetic lifestyle, it was impossible to put away meaningful savings living on minimum wage. They chose a cheap apartment and chose to do with just one car, leaving the husband to use public transportation to get to and from work, and even with a very limited leisure budget, they found that once they had paid rent, the one car payment, their utility costs, and groceries, they had virtually nothing left to spend for the rest of the month – or the pay period.
The question of whether the minimum wage should be raised to help more Americans live out of poverty is outside the scope of this essay. However, the fact that you can have a minimum-wage job and still qualify for food stamps indicates that there is something wrong in the American social structure. There is no reason for people to have to struggle from week to week, if they are working hard and supporting the economy, but the cost of living in the United States has gotten to the point where people can no longer live with dignity without social assistance if they are at the bottom of the employment ladder, in terms of wages. This means that such assistance as food stamps is more important than ever. In the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2011, spending on food stamps hit $75.7 billion – an all time high. This was the largest expenditure on the ledger of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; as with many government programs, spending cuts are looming, as the Congress is looking for ways to balance the budget. The House Agriculture Committee approved a plan on April 18, 2012, to cut funding by about 4 percent over the next 10 years – a total cut of over $33 billion (Bjerga). While numbers like that start to become mind-numbing after reading government documents, if you are one of the families on the food stamp rolls, if your benefits are being cut, those abstract numbers will become quite concrete in a hurry.
For many of the families in America, the promise of the American Dream is fading, as they are struggling to meet day-to-day needs, let alone save for larger aspirations. As a society, it is imperative that we keep funding for such social programs as food stamp assistance in place, because the free-market economy is not working for a large number of Americans. Assistance like food stamps might have been originally intended for those who were out of work, the fact that so many people with jobs need these programs needs that the structure of American society needs fixing. Until that mammoth job is finished, though, it would be imprudent to let these programs lapse – and let family after family fall down the socioeconomic drain. As long as there is unemployment, and as long as there is poverty in the United States, programs like SNAP need to remain in place. It would be tragic to return to such times as the Great Depression, when families simply abandoned their homes and packed into jalopies in search of work, just because Americans could not find a way to share the vast wealth that we as a nation create. Food stamps represent a tangible way for us to share that wealth with one another through the agency of the federal government, giving recipients a chance to get back on their feet and return to prosperity.
Works Cited
Bjerga, Alan. “Food Stamps Keep Going Up as Unemployment Falls.” Bloomberg Business
News 25 April 2012. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-26/food-stamps-keep-going-up-as-unemployment-falls-bgov-barometer.html. Web.
Dean, Stacy. “Food Stamps a Necessary Lifeline.” CNN 19 January 2012.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/19/opinion/dean-food-stamp-program/index.html. Web.
Horsell, Cindy, and Renee Lee. “More Texas Seniors Relying on Food Stamps.” San Antonio
Express 15 July 2012. http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/More-Texas-seniors-relying-on-food-stamps-3709034.php. Web.
