Question from Oregon DHS

In response to Section 743 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, RTI International released a report that explores hunger and food security in America. The report outlines determinants, consequences, and responses to food insecurity, with the hope of spurring policy and program development to address this issue.

This brief from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provides a broad overview of research and evidence of the positive effect of public benefit programs on poverty rates in the U.S. Programs highlighted include SNAP, Medicaid, and refundable tax credits with a discussion of the current support for low income working families (versus historical policies which did not incentivize work). To conclude, the brief provides research citing improved long-term outcomes for children whose families are supported by public benefit programs. Two appendices provide charts with the number of people kept above the poverty in each state; an interesting and potentially helpful resource for policymakers and program administrators.

The United States Department of Agriculture released an annual report that assesses household food security in America. According to this report, 85.7% of American households were food secure in 2013.

The Institute for Research on Poverty released a discussion paper that explored whether exposure to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) increased during the Great Recession. The study also examined how participation in the program was divided across various racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Findings from the study demonstrated that age was a prominent indicator of participation in WIC, and that socioeconomic differences decreased due to an increase of WIC participation by children from wealthier families.

PolicyLink developed an online access portal for users to browse resources designed to improve healthy food access in communities, build local economies, and enhance public health.

The Economic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, released a food access research atlas that presents a spatial overview of food access indicators for low-income and other Census tracts using different measures of supermarket accessibility. The mapping tool also provides food access data for populations within Census tracts and offers Census-tract-level data on food access for download for community planning or research purposes. Users are also able to create maps showing food access indicators by Census tract using different measures and indicators of supermarket accessibility, view indicators of food access for selected subpopulations, and download Census-tract-level data on food access measures.

The University of Kentucky's Center for Poverty Research released a discussion paper that explores whether the safety net reduces food insecurity for families and children who receive any of the five major safety net programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Medicaid. The results indicated that the various safety net programs do improve food security.

The Institute for Research on Poverty released a discussion paper exploring the reasoning behind why some low-income Americans do not capitalize on nongovernmental free food assistance programs in their communities. The study focused on data collected from 63 in-depth interviews with low-income residents from San Francisco who did not use this available assistance. Overall, the report indicated that respondents did not feel that the free food assistance outweighed the psychological costs involved with accepting assistance. Such psychological costs include moral objections with accepting food from others and the emotional toll of accepting assistance.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA) released a letter that discusses the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Summer Food Service Program, a program that ensures that children have access to meals when school is not in session.