MARTINSVILLE, Ohio — With food stamp use at record highs and
climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme
now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.
It
has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as
ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use
inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese,
swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with
foreclosure signs.
Virtually all have incomes near or below the
federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of
people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and
married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime
recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender
wages leave pantries bare.
While the numbers have soared during the
recession,
the path was cleared in better times when the Bush administration led a
campaign to erase the program’s stigma, calling food stamps
“nutritional aid” instead of welfare, and made it easier to apply.
That
bipartisan effort capped an extraordinary reversal from the 1990s, when
some conservatives tried to abolish the program, Congress enacted large
cuts and bureaucratic hurdles chased many needy people away.
From
the ailing resorts of the Florida Keys to Alaskan villages along the
Bering Sea, the program is now expanding at a pace of about 20,000
people a day.
There are 239 counties in the United States where
at least a quarter of the population receives food stamps, according to
an analysis of local data collected by The New York Times.
The
counties are as big as the Bronx and Philadelphia and as small as
Owsley County in Kentucky, a patch of Appalachian distress where half
of the 4,600 residents receive food stamps.
In more than 750
counties, the program helps feed one in three blacks. In more than 800
counties, it helps feed one in three children. In the Mississippi River
cities of St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans, half of the children or
more receive food stamps. Even in Peoria, Ill. — Everytown, U.S.A. —
nearly 40 percent of children receive aid.
Nationwide,
food stamps reach about two-thirds of those eligible,
with rates ranging from an estimated 50 percent in California to 98
percent in Missouri. Mr. Concannon urged lagging states to do more to
enroll the needy, citing
a recent government report that found a sharp rise in Americans with inconsistent access to adequate food.
“This
is the most urgent time for our feeding programs in our lifetime, with
the exception of the Depression,” he said. “It’s time for us to face up
to the fact that in this country of plenty, there are hungry people.”
The
program’s growing reach can be seen in a corner of southwestern Ohio
where red state politics reign and blue-collar workers have often
called food stamps a sign of laziness. But unemployment has soared, and
food stamp use in a six-county area outside Cincinnati has risen more
than 50 percent.
By contrast, in the federal cash welfare
program, states until recently bore the entire cost of caseload growth,
and nationally the rolls have stayed virtually flat. Unemployment
insurance, despite rapid growth, reaches about only half the jobless
(and replaces about half their income), making food stamps the only aid
many people can get — the safety net’s safety net.
Support for
the food stamp program reached a nadir in the mid-1990s when critics,
likening the benefit to cash welfare, won significant restrictions and
sought even more. But after use plunged for several years, President
Bill Clinton began promoting the program, in part as a way to help the
working poor. President
George W. Bush expanded that effort, a strategy Mr. Obama has embraced.
The
revival was crowned last year with an upbeat change of name. What most
people still call food stamps is technically the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program, or SNAP.
Now
nearly 12 percent of Americans receive aid — 28 percent of blacks, 15
percent of Latinos and 8 percent of whites. Benefits average about $130
a month for each person in the household, but vary with shelter and
child care costs.
See the complete article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/us/29foodstamps.html?hp=&pagewanted=all
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