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Notes
CHAPTER 1
1.Prinz was a young rabbi and Jewish leader in Berlin who spoke out forcefully against National Socialism long before Hitler took power. He urged Jews to leave Germany, was frequently arrested, and was then expelled in 1937. He and his family came to the United States, where he became one of the leading figures of Judaism. At the 1963 March on Washington he spoke immediately before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his riveting “I Have a Dream” speech. Prinz’s speech, text and audio, can be found at http://www.joachimprinz.com/biography.htm.
2.Six million is a conservative estimate that includes deaths from infections and illnesses not resisted due in significant part to malnutrition. The statistical starting point is the evidence-based conclusion that 3.1 million children under age five die each year from hunger or causes connected to it (45 percent of annual under-age-five deaths) according to the UN World Food Program, “Hunger Statistics,” July 9, 2015, https:www.wfp.org/hunger/stats, which cites the British medical journal The Lancet and its 2013 “Series on Maternal and Child Nutrition.” If birth-related maternal deaths are added, the total is 3.5 million, according to an executive summary of that series.
3.UN Food and Agriculture Organization, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018, p. 2, http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition/en/.
4.Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (New York: United Nations, 2015), https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingour world. The SDGs are qualified by an introduction, which states that targets for each goal are “aspirational global targets, with each government setting its own national targets.”
5.In all likelihood the decline in hunger coincided closely with the decline in poverty in the 1960s and 1970s, as I explain in chapter 2.
CHAPTER 2
1.Michael Gerson, “A Week of Hunger,” The Washington Post, July 9, 2008, A15.
2.Michael Harrington, The Other America (Baltimore: Penguin 1964 edition of Macmillan’s 1963 first edition), acknowledgments page.
3.Arthur Simon, Faces of Poverty (St. Louis: Concordia, 1966; and New York: Macmillan, 1968).
4.Alisha Coleman-Jensen et al., Household Food Security in the United States in 2017, US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, ERR-256, September 2018, p. 7. People have very low food security if adults report six or more food-insecure conditions, and eight or more for households with children. Their food intake was reduced at times and their eating pattern disrupted because the households lacked money and other resources for food.
5.Kayla Fontenot et al., Income and Poverty in the United States 2017, US Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-263, 11–12.
6.SNAP expects a family to spend 30 percent of its income on food. The full benefit in 2018 for a family of three with no net monthly income is $504, so $192 of Angela’s salary is subtracted from $504. SNAP’s Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card functions like a bank debit card but can be used only for SNAP-qualified grocery products. For details of fiscal year 2018 eligibility for SNAP benefits based on income and assets, https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility. See also the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “A Quick Guide to SNAP Eligibility and Benefits,” September 14, 2017, https://www.cbpp.org/research/a-quick-guide-to-SNAP-eligibility-and-benefits.
7.US Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service for 2018, note 6 above.
8.Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015).
9.Victor Oliveira, “The Food Assistance Landscape: FY 2017 Annual Report,” US Department of Agriculture, March 2017, www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=88073. Electronic debit cards reduce the stigma and increase the security and efficiency of the program.
10.Feeding America, Hunger in America 2014: A Report on Charitable Food Distribution in the United States in 2013, prepared for Feeding America by Westat and the Urban Institute, August 2014, written by Nancy S. Weinfield et al., pp. 160, 162, http://help.feedingamerica .org/HungerInAmerica/hunger-in-america-2014-full-report.pdf.
11.Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Policy Basics: Introduction to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Household: Fiscal Year,” March 24, 2016, p. 2, http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-introduction-to-the-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program.
12.US Department of Agriculture, Food & Nutrition Service, “Characteristics of USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Households: Fiscal Year 2016 (Summary),” November 2017.
13.Bernadette D. Proctor et al., Income and Poverty in the United States 2016, US Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-259, September 2017, p. 3.
14.Hilary W. Hoynes et al., Long Run Impacts of Childhood Access to the Safety-net , November 2012, http://www.nber.org/papers/w18535.
15.Jim Tankersley, “How Ben Carson Beat the Odds: His Escape from Poverty Was Fueled by His Drive, His Faith, His Mother—and a Leg Up from His Government,” The Washington Post, October 31, 2015, A1.
16.See Gerson, “A Week of Hunger.” Gerson was an advisor and speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
17.David R. Obey, Raising Hell for Justice (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), 24–25.
18.$149 billion in US food exports in 2014, with Netherlands next at $93 billion. World Atlas, http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-american-food-giant-the-largest-exporter-of-food-in-the-world.html.
19.“Report of the Special Rapporteur [Philip Alston] on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights on His Mission to the United States of America” to the UN Human Rights Council, June 22, 2018, pp. 3–7.
20.“Americans’ Views on Hunger,” October 2014, conducted jointly by Democrat and Republican consultants on behalf of Tyson Foods and the Food Research and Action Center, p. 7, http://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/frac_tyson_oct_2014_public_view_hunger_poll.pdf.
21.Food insecurity was 11.9 percent in 1995. US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, “Key Statistics & Graphics,” 2016, pp. 2 and 7, https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx.
22.Income and Poverty, note 5 above, 11–12.
23.Although the federal government failed to do a nationwide documentation of hunger before 1995, Bread for the World, Second Harvest (now Feeding America), and Food Research and Action Center (among others) did local surveys in various parts of the country. These showed results consistent with those of the more extensive Census Bureau surveys that began in 1995. There were also specialized professional studies, such as a ten-state study on the nutritional status of the poor ordered by Congress and partly completed by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare but cut short (to avoid political emb...
