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Essay on food insecurity in the usa
Essay on food insecurity in the usa
Food crisis in america
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New York Food Insecurity
“New York’s Food Pantries under Strain and Need Help,” is an article on the CNN Money website (November 23, 2016) by Amanda Stern from the Robin Food Foundation (Stern, 2016). The article describes a fall in the food insecurity in the US since the economic recession in 2008. Stern indicates that the number of individuals struggling to get food has decreased. According to the article, the data by the Hunger Free America indicate that New York City has experienced a decrease in the number of individuals with food insecurity by 250,000 people (Stern, 2016). The report gives relieve for the city from the high food insecurities especially at the peak of the recession. Stern in this article indicates that the decrease
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Out of this number, New York City alone has about 1.2 million people with the food insecurity problem. Stern further indicates that in the Robin Food Foundation, they have witnessed a high demand from the city’s emergency food providers (Stern, 2016).
Another shocking fact from the article is that about 15% of the people in New York with food insecurity were employed (Stern, 2016). This, therefore, indicates the challenges the poorest population in the city are facing. Despite the ongoing economic recovery, a large number of people are struggling to live even when they are employed. As the city struggle with the crisis of expensive housing and the rents continue to rise, the increasing cost of living is continuing to put more pressure on families with low income (Stern, 2016).
It is unbelievable that almost half of the people in New York are living on and below the poverty line. The article further indicates that about 56% of households struggle with rent payment because a large portion of their income, more than a third of their salary is used in paying rent (Stern, 2016). The rent expenditure leaves less money for other
“How can a middle-class family afford a rent of $2,000 or even $2,800 when the family consists of four children and a single working parent. when food needs to be on the table every night and bills need to be paid. I find this ridiculous, no one ever wanted to live in Bushwick and now all of a sudden these people want to live here.” -
Gundersen, C., Weinreb, L., Wehler, C., & Hosmer, D. (2003). Homelessness And Food Insecurity. Journal of Housing Economics, 12(3), 250-272.
In the essay she uses quotes, and information from many reliable sources that make the essay more of a reality. In her essay, she uses one quote that says, “”Families are struggling in a way they haven’t done for a long time,” says Brian Loring the executive director of Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County, Iowa, which provides lunches for more than two hundred kids at five locations during summer months.” This is one of her many resources throughout the article. Her great use of research, and resources helps persuade the reader this is an actual ongoing problem within America that needs to be taken care of. She also uses information from many different states from New York and Iowa to Washington and Connecticut. Her use of more than just one place in America gives the readers more knowledge that this isn’t just happening in one place, but it is happening all over America.
Wallechinsky demonstrates the many hardships that families and individuals go through. “Almost two-thirds say they live from paycheck to paycheck, and 47% say that no matter how hard they work, they cannot get
One of the most prominent concerns of Evicted is the issue of inescapable financial instability as it relates to eviction. In the very first few pages of the book, Desmond reveals that the majority of poor renting families in America spend over 50% of their income on housing, with an even more astonishing one in four spending over 70% of their income on it (4). When families are spending the majority of their already meager income on housing alone, it is no surprise that they have little money left for savings or self-betterment programs such as a college education. Compounded with this is the fact that some welfare systems are constructed in a way that discourages long-term financial responsibility. For example, Supplemental Security Income, a program that provides monthly stipends for low-income elderly or disabled individuals, is revoked if individuals have too much money in their bank account (217). For
New York has the 25th highest poverty rate in the United States. According to the Ameri...
Since poverty affects a wide array of people, poverty has evolved into a very complex issue. And even though the government has passed legislature to try to ameliorate the situation, many of these means-tested measures like food stamps, have only been able to help the surface of poverty and fails to rip out the long roots poverty has grown throughout history. Poverty’s deep effects are seen especially in minorities as they struggle much more to leave a current situation that has been created by historical process. Even though government assistance like food stamps do help alleviate some of poverty’s burden, these measures fail to recognize the reality that many of the impoverished minority have undervalued homes or no homes at all and even if they can rent, that rent can be high enough to take up more than fifty-percent of their paychecks. Overall, poverty in America is a vastly complicated issue rooted throughout history. And even though the government has attempted to pass legislature to help provide relief from poverty, America still has yet to provide measures that target the roots of poverty and until then, the government assistance it does provide will only be superficial and fail to provide long-term solutions to a complicated
According to a recent New York Times article, there are people in New York with multiple jobs that still cannot afford to pay the rent on a apartment in the city. Therefore, many remain homeless and must find relief in one of the city’s shelters. (nytimes.com) The New York Times states that, “Advocates of affordable housing say that the employed homeless are proof of the widening gap between wages and rents — which rose in the city even during the latest recession — and, given the shortage of subsidized housing, of just how difficult it is to escape the shelter system, even for people with jobs….the jobs aren’t enough to get people out of homelessness” (nytimes.com). What we see modeled in New York City is a disturbing ...
Food insecurity is a concerning issue that need to be addressed in our current society. In population such as the elderly it is alerting issue. For instance, many older adults lack access, have chronic health conditions and limited support when obtaining food. As result older adults experience nutritional complication such as malnourishment and sometimes death. To reduce the complications associated with food insecurity in the elderly population interventions are needed. This paper will highlight several interventions that addressed the issue of food insecurity among the elderly population. Lastly, this paper will provide detail information on which intervention will be the best approach in increasing food intake and nourishment among the
Doug O’Brien, director of public policy and research at Chicago-based Second Harvest, says “’we’ve seen a real shift in who we serve. A decade ago, there were almost always homeless, single men and chronic substance abusers. Now we have children and working families at soup kitchens’” (Koch). These families that are feeling the effects of food insecurity will not be the only ones affected by it, but all of America.
Consequently, a large number of homeless individuals in New Yorkers are either sleeping in municipal shelters. This number is 85 percent higher than it was ten years ago. The primary cause of homelessness amongst these individuals is the lack of affordable housing. Additionally, a significant number of New York City’s homeless population is a direct result of serious mental illness, addiction disorders and other health problems. Four out of five street homeless New Yorkers are men and close to 60% of the City’s unsheltered homeless population live on the streets of Manhattan. Homelessness primarily affects oppressed groups such as African American and Latinos. Fifty five percent of the City’s homeless population are African American and 31%
In the year 2015, around 40 million U.S. citizens were food insecure (Randall para. 3). Food insecurity can be defined in paragraph 3 by “[having] difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. This 12.7% of American citizens also contains another group - children. Aged 10-17, 6.8 million adolescents struggle with a food insecurity. There have been several years of cuts to the social programs designed to help these people, along with the Great Recession continuing to leave an impact on the U.S. economy (para. 6). Under the Obama administration, $8.6 billion was cut from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps. From 1993-2001 under the Clinton administration, former President Bill Clinton’s administration “gutted the welfare system” (para. 15). Because of these budget cuts, the families who rely on food assistance from the government have been allotted less throughout the years. From a sociological perspective, the concepts of sociological imagination, class stratification, and social location are in effect when it comes to child hunger in the United States. Being hungry is an issue larger than any one individual can control.
America is a capitalist society. It should come to a surprise when we live like this daily. We work for profit. We’ll buy either for pleasure or to sell later for profit. It should come to no surprise that our food is made the same way because we are what we eat. We are capitalist that eat a capitalist meal. So we must question our politics. Is our government system to blame for accepting and encouraging monopolies?
The US is filled with so much food that there are regulations on how long a company can keep food before being forced into throwing it away. This extra food is not used to feed its own people who do not have enough purchasing power to buy this wasted food for themselves. This paper will talk about the food insecurity in US, the types of programs that are used to help those with low income, and how to improve these programs so that rates of food insecurity can decrease.
Food insecurity and poor nutrition is an alarmingly large problem for low income families, especially in developing countries. Many strategies exist to fight this problem, although not many of these address all the factors contributing to it along with all the possible solutions to solve it. In many cases, multiple strategies must correlate and work together so that all the determinants of this issue are addressed and can fight food insecurity from different angles. This essay will discuss the significance of the problem, a range of possible strategies to solve the problem, and go into detail on a select few that will correlate and work together to solve different factors of food insecurity and poor nutrition.