Childhood Hunger

Bill Shore’s Letters

A Letter About Extreme Poverty and Childhood Hunger

April 2007

Dear Friend,

The loud beeping sound made by a truck or construction vehicle when it shifts into reverse warns of imminent danger. We stop and pay attention, and reach for the hand of our child. Shouldn’t there be a similar warning when children’s lives are threatened by social progress sliding into reverse?

The recent McClatchy Newspapers analysis of Census Bureau statistics sounded such an alarm when it revealed that the percentage of poor Americans living in severe poverty is higher today than it was in 1975. The number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That’s 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.

This trend is particularly disturbing in the face of so much progress in other areas during the same time: gains in worker productivity, revolutions in technology and communications, remarkable discoveries in science and medicine. For most of us, the quality of life has improved substantially since 1975. Yet 16 million Americans now live in extreme poverty, which is defined as half the federal poverty line — an annual income of $9,903 for a family of four with two children.

Tragically, poverty has held its grip on millions of American families through every economic cycle over the past 30 years. But one difference today is that we know how to address one of poverty’s most devastating consequences: the hunger and poor nutrition that affect a child’s growth, development and ability to succeed in school.

Over the last 30 years, good bipartisan public policy and heroic private efforts have combined to create a system of food and nutrition programs to guarantee that our most vulnerable children, even if poor, won’t go hungry. We know that programs such as school lunch and breakfast, summer feeding and nutrition education work.

But not all kids have access to these programs. For example, only 43.9 percent of eligible (low-income) children in the United States currently receive free or reduced-fee school breakfasts, and only 19 percent of low-income children eligible for summer meals through the Summer Food Service Program receive them. Those children who lack access to such programs are as much in harm’s way as if standing in the blind spot of a steamroller backing down the street.

Poverty is complex. Many experts disagree on how to solve it. It will surely take a lot of money and time to do so. But there are no excuses for going backward. When a report like the McClatchy analysis warns of imminent danger, our moral obligation is to ensure every child is out of harm’s way.

Seventy percent of the hungriest children in America live in 10 states. They are not just Census Bureau statistics. They are Robert and Orlando and Julia and Sarah and Xavier and Terrell, and too many more. We’ve spent enough time with them at their schools, clinics, playgrounds and churches to know what they need and how to get it to them.

State by state, national organizations such as Share Our Strength, collaborating with local advocacy groups, government and service providers, are forging comprehensive partnerships to ensure that every child has access to nutritious food to learn, grow and thrive. This comprehensive effort will guide work to ensure eligible families and children have access to programs that prevent hunger.

It is possible to end childhood hunger in America. We have the resources, and with political leadership that embraces ending childhood hunger, we can make this issue a top priority for Americans.

We can’t afford the kind of division in America represented by most of us enjoying all that American life has to offer in 2007 but the most vulnerable among us losing even what little they’ve gained since 1975. We can’t afford the kind of division represented by soaring corporate profits and record Wall Street bonuses while increasingly desperate families wait in line at food pantries so that they may feed their children with what is leftover.

As the novelist James Baldwin once said, “For these are all our children, and we shall profit by, or pay for, what they become.”

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