Poverty

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Thu Feb 5, 2004 2:16 pm

The Poverty that is America, " the richest

nation in the world "

 

 

 

 

Long queue at drive-in soup kitchen

 

 

George Bush's America, the wealthiest nation in

history, faces a growing

poverty crisis. In the first of a three-part

series Julian Borger takes

the pulse of the US with elections just a year

away.

 

Julian Borger Sunday

The Observer

 

The free food is handed out at nine, but the

queue starts forming hours

earlier. By dawn, there is a line of cars

stretching half a mile back. In

Logan, it is what passes for rush hour - a

traffic jam driven by poverty

and hunger.

 

The cars come out of the Ohio hills in all shapes

and sizes, from the old

jalopies of the chronically poor, to the newer,

sleeker models of the new

members of the club, who only months ago

considered themselves middle

class, before jobs and their retirement funds

evaporated.

 

Dan Larkin is sitting in his middle-of-the-range

pick-up truck. Since the

glassware company he worked for closed its doors

this time last year, he

has found it hard to pay his bills. His

unemployment benefits ran out six

months ago and his groceries bill is the only

part of his budget that has

some give. He and his wife sometimes skip meals

or eat less to make sure

their six-year-old daughter has enough.

 

" I would have a real problem putting food on the

table if it wasn't for

this, " Mr Larkin said, his car inching towards

Logan's church-run food

pantry. As the queue rolled forward, he reflected

on the ironies of being

a citizen of the world's sole superpower.

 

" They're sending $87bn to the second richest oil

nation in the world but

can't afford to feed their own here in the

States. "

 

George Bush's America is the wealthiest and most

powerful nation the world

has ever known, but at home it is being gnawed

away from the inside by

persistent and rising poverty. The three million

Americans who have lost

their jobs since Mr Bush took office in January

2001 have yet to find new

work in a largely jobless recovery, and they are

finding that the safety

net they assumed was beneath them has long since

unravelled. There is not

much left to stop them falling.

 

Last year alone, another 1.7 million Americans

slipped below the poverty

line, bringing the total to 34.6 million, one in

eight of the population.

Over 13 million of them are children. In fact,

the US has the worst child

poverty rate and the worst life expectancy of all

the world's

industrialised countries, and the plight of its

poor is worsening.

 

The ranks of the hungry are increasing in step.

About 31 million Americans

were deemed to be " food insecure " (they literally

did not know where their

next meal was coming from). Of those, more than

nine million were

categorised by the US department of agriculture

as experiencing real

hunger, defined by the US department of

agriculture as an " uneasy or

painful sensation caused by lack of food due to

lack of resources to

obtain food. "

 

That was two years ago, before the recession

really began to bite. Partial

surveys suggest the problem has deepened

considerably since then. In 25

major cities the need for emergency food rose an

average of 19% last year.

 

Another indicator is the demand for food stamps,

the government aid

programme of last resort. The number of Americans

on stamps has risen from

17 million to 22 million since Mr Bush took

office.

 

In Ohio, hunger is an epidemic. Since George Bush

won Ohio in the 2000

presidential elections, the state has lost one in

six of its manufacturing

jobs. Two million of the state's 11 million

population resorted to food

charities last year, an increase of more than 18%

from 2001.

 

In Logan, over 500 families regularly turn out

twice monthly at the food

pantry run by the Smith Chapel United Methodist

Church.

 

" In all our history starting in the mid-80s we've

never seen these

numbers, " said Dannie Devol, who runs the pantry.

The food comes from a

regional food bank, which is stocked by a mix of

private donations and

food bought from local farmers by the government.

 

Efficient

 

 

Fresh vegetables, cans of meat and tuna, and

boxes of cereal are stacked

in the car park and as the line of cars breaks

into two queues to edge

past the pallets, volunteers inspect identity

cards (customers have to

show they live in the county and are in need)

before loading rations of

food into the backs of the vehicles. It is an

efficient and peculiarly

American solution to hunger - a drive-through

soup kitchen.

 

Those without cars hitch rides with neighbours.

Mothers come with their

children in the back of trucks. Karin Chriss

brought one of her three

children in a 10-year-old Chevrolet van. " If they

stopped this I'd be hurt

food-wise. I'm cutting down the amount we eat as

it is, " Mrs Chriss said.

Her husband is a truck driver but does not earn

enough to pay the bills.

The people in Washington, she says, " need to come

down and see how many

people are in these lines " .

 

Not many Washington politicians do. There was a

time when fighting this

kind of poverty was at the core of American

politics: Franklin Roosevelt

made it his life's work; Lyndon Johnson declared

a war on poverty with his

Great Society programmes in the 1960s.

 

There are more Americans living in poverty now

than there were in 1965,

but neither party has much to say about it. The

Bush Republicans see it as

a matter for " faith-based charities " , the status

quo before Roosevelt's

New Deal in the 1930s. The trouble is that hard

times are drying up

donations at the very time private charities are

being asked to take on

most of the burden.

 

Democrats, meanwhile, are anxious not to appear

as class warriors, and

most of the Democratic presidential contenders in

this election portray

themselves as champions of the middle class, for

good reason. Americans

who see themselves as middle class are much more

likely to vote than those

who know they are poor. Mrs Chriss thinks all

parties should be abolished.

Angela Cooper, also queuing with a young child,

complains that families

like hers have been forgotten. But then again,

she has relatives posted in

Iraq and feels she ought to " support our troops "

by voting for the

president.

 

" There's resentment down deep but people don't

know what to do with it. A

lot of people turn inward, rather than outward.

You think it would be ripe

for an outcry. But it's not, it's all kind of

dulled, " said Bob Garbo, who

runs a regional food distribution centre in this

corner of Ohio. " There's

a feeling you can't do much about it, that

politicians are all bad. Voting

rates are down, and politicians are taking

advantage of that. Here, only

20% turn out to vote in some counties. "

 

It is hardly surprising the very poor feel they

have no one to turn to. A

string of local factories have closed in the past

two years to relocate to

Mexico, a delayed consequence of the North

American Free Trade Agreement

established by Bill Clinton in 1994. And two

years later, it was Clinton,

in cooperation with a staunchly Republican

Congress, who dismantled much

of the welfare system built in the New Deal and

the Great Society.

Clinton's welfare reform set a time limit on how

long the poor and

unemployed could draw social security payments.

It helped force people

back into work with the encouragement of an array

of federally funded job

training programmes.

 

It worked well while the economy was booming,

cutting the number on

welfare from 12 million to five million in a few

years. But now there are

no jobs. Those who went to work under welfare

reform are among the first

to be fired, and often find that welfare is no

longer available to them.

Some have used up their lifetime maximum. Some

have accumulated too many

assets to qualify, such as a car or a house that

they do not want to sell

for fear of falling yet further into destitution.

 

Others have had difficulty dealing with the

welfare system's more

demanding requirements. A few in the line at

Logan said they were

struggling without success to extract vital

documents from former

employers, who have either gone bankrupt or gone

abroad.

 

Decline

 

 

So, while poverty rates have been rising in the

past few years, the

number of Americans on welfare has been steadily

declining. Another impact

of the 1996 welfare reform was that the

unemployed were obliged to take

service jobs at the minimum wage (now $5.15 per

hour) without benefits

such as paid holidays or health insurance. On

paper they were part of the

success of the welfare-to-work project, but the

jobs stocking supermarket

shelves or cleaning offices usually left them

worse off, especially if

someone in the family fell sick.

 

In Ohio, according to Lisa Hamler-Podolski, more

than 40% of the people in

the food lines are the working poor.

 

The harsh impact of welfare reform was initially

mitigated by the 90s boom

and Clinton-era social programmes to support the

working poor and retrain

the unemployed. Those programmes are now

disappearing under an

administration which fundamentally does not

believe government should have

a direct role in alleviating poverty.

 

Melissa Pardue, a specialist on poverty at the

market-oriented Heritage

Foundation, reflects the beliefs of many in the

administration when she

argues welfare reform has not gone far enough.

" The impact of the

recession would have been far greater without

welfare reform, " she said.

" The people who continue to be affected are not

working. People who choose

not to get a job are not going to see more

income. It's all the more

reason to give greater incentives to looking for

work. "

 

The government still distributes food stamps, but

they are worth on

average only about $160 (£100) a month, not

enough to buy food for a

family with no other income. Furthermore, more

than 10 million " food

insecure " Americans, at risk from hunger, do not

apply for them. Often

they are unaware they are eligible. Welfare

reform pushed them out of a

system that they have lost contact with.

 

A study this year by Washington-based think tank

the Urban Institute found

that 63% of this forgotten category sometimes or

often run out of food

each month. All these factors explain why,

although the current slump in

America has not been as deep as the last major

recession a decade ago, the

food lines this time are longer. They also

explain why hunger remains a

largely invisible problem. The Americans in the

food lines often do not

show up in the statistics and usually do not turn

up for elections.

 

" Hunger is a hidden thing, " said Lynn Brantley,

who runs a food bank in

Washington where the very poor live within sight

of Congress. " It's

something we don't really want to look at. We

don't want to admit it. "

 

· Tomorrow: The chronic health crisis facing

America's poor and

uninsured

 

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

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