Food Stamps: A Kids' Thing
Half of American children 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 that 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.
"This is what children can expect over a period of time, not just during a recession," Rank says.
"It shows that the period of childhood, rather than a period of safety and security, is really a time, for a lot of kids, of economic turmoil and risk."
Rank says his study, the first of its kind, may underestimate how many struggle with food bills. Only about 67% of those eligible for food stamps actually get them, the Department of Agriculture says.
Nutritional programs such as food stamps -- officially known as the USDA's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- improve children's health and help them do better in school, says James Weill of the advocacy group Food Research and Action Center, who wasn't involved in the new study.
More than 35.8 million Americans used food stamps in July, nearly 6.8 million more than a year earlier, Weill's group says. "There is a large pool of people who are poor or who are living close to poverty at any given time," Weill says. "People don't like talking about it. They don't tell their neighbors, 'I was on food stamps 10 years ago.' "
About half of recipients were children, Rank says.
Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, says the study design and survey data are solid. But he says the findings are neither surprising nor troubling.
"That's effectively like saying that at some point in a 20-year period, a parent would be unemployed for a month or so," Rector says. (c) Copyright 2009 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
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