ChattahBox - November 3, 2009 - A new study finds that nearly half of all American children will need to use the federal food stamp program to eat at some point in their childhood, with the number much higher for African American children, at a startling 90 percent. And the current recession with persistently high unemployment rates, will cause the numbers of children on food stamps to rise even higher, say researchers.
The researchers, Mark R. Rank, PhD of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri and Thomas A. Hirschl, PhD of the Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York used thirty years of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics survey.
The study concluded that:
“American children are at a high risk of encountering a spell during which their families are in poverty and food insecure as indicated through their use of food stamps. Such events have the potential to seriously jeopardize a child’s overall health.”
The alarming results showed that between the ages of 1 to 20 years, nearly half (49.2%) of all U.S. children will live in a household that receives food stamps. Broken down by race, 37 percent of white children use food stamps, compared to a whopping 90 percent of black children.
The high numbers of American youngsters experiencing food insecurity reveal the hidden face of childhood hunger in our country. Children from all walks of life, may need to resort to food stamps to eat at some point in their lives.
“Your neighbor may be using some of these programs but it’s not the kind of thing people want to talk about,” Dr. Rank said. “This is a real danger sign that we as a society need to do a lot more to protect children,” Rank added.
For a family of four to be eligible for food stamps, their annual take-home pay can’t exceed about $22,000.
James Weill, president of Food Research and Action Center, a Washington-based advocacy group, said it best:
“What I hope comes out of this study is an understanding that food stamp beneficiaries aren’t them - they’re us.”
[end story] - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/yjvmm4p
The Vol. 163 No. 11, November 2009 study in a nutshell:
Estimating the Risk of Food Stamp Use and Impoverishment During Childhood
Mark R. Rank, PhD; Thomas A. Hirschl, PhD
Objective:
To estimate the lifetime risk that an American child will reside in a household receiving food stamps and, as a result, will encounter poverty and a heightened exposure to food insecurity.
Design Thirty years of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics survey data set.
Setting Nationally representative sample of the US population.
Participants Approximately 90 000 childhood years of information are pooled together to create a series of life tables that span the ages of 1 to 20 years.
Main Outcome Measure Self-reporting measure of whether survey households received the Food Stamp Program during the prior year.
Results Between the ages of 1 to 20 years, nearly half (49.2%) of all American children will, at some point, reside in a household that receives food stamps. Households in need of the program use it for relatively short periods but are also likely to return to the program at several points during the childhood years.
Race, parental education, and head of household's marital status exert a strong influence on the proportion of children residing in a food stamp household.
Conclusions American children are at a high risk of encountering a spell during which their families are in poverty and food insecure as indicated through their use of food stamps.
Such events have the potential to seriously jeopardize a child's overall health.
Author Affiliations: George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri (Dr Rank); and Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (Dr Hirschl).
" - [and end] - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/ylbzaov
And this is how it looked earlier already, so there's been time enough to do something about it. Instead the $billions line the pockets of the war profiteers.
WHILE WORLD CAPITALISTS SPEND TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON THEIR WANTON WARS,
HUNGER KILLS 18,000 CHILDREN EACH DAY
By Hassan El-Najjar
Al-Jazeerah, February 17, 2007 - While world capitalists spend trillions of dollars on their wanton wars, hunger kills 18,000 children everyday, as reported by UN officials below.
These are not children dying only in poor areas in the world, but they are children dying as a result of wars launched on their countries by the world imperialist powers.
On top of these children come those of Palestine, who have been under an Israeli-US-EU financial embargo for more than a year now, for no reason other than their parents exercising their political democratic rights. Their sin was voting for Hamas. They have been punished because of expressing their desire to get rid of the brutal Israeli occupation of their homeland.
Iraqi children have been killed since the US-Led NATO embargo (1990-2003), which resulted in killing more than half a million Iraqi children in the 1990s. The US Secretary of State, Mad Albright, then uttered her infamous announcement that killing them was "worth it." Their plight did not end by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. More than 650,000 Iraqi civilians were killed by the end of 2006. Most of them were children, women, elders, and innocent civilian men.
In Darfur, suddenly rebel groups emerged when oil and uranium reserves became well-known. These rebel groups have been well supplied with weapons to fight for independence from Sudan. You can guess who is funding them. Again, Darfur children have been victims of this oil-uranium war, just like their fellow Sudanese in the South in the past.
Afghani children have been suffering continuously since the US encouraged Afghanis to fight the Soviet invasion in 1979. The war devastated the economy and resulted in a failing state. When finally, the Soviets left in mid-1980s, the US left the Afghanis alone fighting a devastating civil war, which destroyed what was left of the countries institutions. Finally, since the 2001 US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war, Afghanis have not seen improvement in their life, including those related to children.
A frequent NATO media propaganda has been expressing intentions for reconstruction, after defeating the Taliban resistance movement!
Then, all over the world, pockets of poverty have been centers of starvation and suffering for children. Wealthy northern hemisphere nations have been spending trillions of dollars on their military spending and wars in the poor southern hemisphere.
Dreams of humanity for peace after World War II have evaporated when US-Led NATO countries have marginalized the UN by starting a neo-imperialist era. Wars and invasions have replaced cooperation and dreams for a better future for humanity.
The capitalist-war curse has not only impacted the poor in the world. It has been sinking the US deep in national debt, which has reached $8.9 trillion. The Bush administration alone has added more than $3 trillion to the US national debt, basically on its wars in the Middle East and around the world.
If not addressed, by stopping US wars and closing all US military bases abroad, the sky-rocketing US national debt will destroy the US economy. The, God forbid, American children will be suffering like children in other continents.
AP Headline: U.N.: Hunger Kills 18,000 Kids Each Day
By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer
Feb 17, 2007, 7:43 AM EST
UNITED NATIONS (AP) --
Some 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition and 850 million people go to bed every night with empty stomachs, a "terrible indictment of the world in 2007," the head of the U.N. food agency said.
James Morris called for students and young people, faith-based groups, the business community and governments to join forces in a global movement to alleviate and eliminate hunger - especially among children.
"The little girl in Malawi who's fed, and goes to school: 50 percent less likely to be HIV-positive, 50 percent less likely to give birth to a low birth weight baby," he said in an interview Friday. "Everything about her life changes for the better and it's the most important, significant, humanitarian, political, or economic investment the world can make in its future."
Morris, an American businessman and former president the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment, one of the largest charitable organizations in the U.S., is stepping down as executive director of the Rome-based World Food Program in April after five years of leading the world's largest humanitarian organization.
He said that while the percentage of people who are hungry and malnourished has decreased from a fifth of the world's population to a sixth of the population, the actual number of hungry people is growing by about 5 million people a year because of the rising population.
"Today 850 million people are hungry and malnourished. Over half of them are children. 18,000 children die every single day because of hunger and malnutrition," Morris said. "This is a shameful fact - a terrible indictment of the world in 2007, and it's an issue that needs to be solved."
Morris said the largest number of malnourished children are in India - more than 100 million - followed by nearly 40 million in China.
"I'm very optimistic that India and China are very focused on this issue," he said. "They're making great progress - (but) need to do more. (It) needs to be a top priority."
Elsewhere, there are probably 100 million hungry children in the rest of Asia, another 100 million in Africa where countries have fewer resources to help, and 30 million in Latin America, he said.
As Morris prepares to leave his post, he said the two issues of greatest concern are the increasing number of impoverished people and the "very significant, growing number of natural disasters around the world."
According to the World Bank, natural disasters have increased fourfold over the last 30 years, he said. That means several billion people need instant help over the course of a decade because of disasters such as the tsunami, the Pakistan earthquake, or drought in southern Africa.
The response to these disasters and conflicts such as in Sudan's Darfur region and Lebanon has meant that most development aid has been used to save lives - not to help communities prevent disasters and promote development through agricultural programs, education for children and water conservation, Morris said.
The agency's biggest operation today is in Darfur, where violence and security are major problems and 2.5 million people have fled their homes and now live in camps.
"Our convoys are attacked almost daily. We had a truck driver killed there at the end of last year. Our convoys coming through Chad from Libya are always at risk. When the African Union troops were there, that was very helpful. The U.N. troops will be even more helpful," Morris said.
He was referring to a plan for an AU-U.N. force to be deployed in Darfur, which is awaiting approval from Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
[HR - independent Africa correspondent for ten years: The terror in Darfur is home made in the US - Url.: nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/77586.html]
American diplomat Josette Sheeran will replace Morris, who plans to head home to Indianapolis.
"I will work as hard as I can every day of the rest of my life to see that more resources are available to feed hungry children," Morris said."*
HR: MORRIS SHOULD TALK TO HIS BOSSES AT THE US JUNTA IN WASHINGTON OR THE WAR LORDS, THE GROUP'S MANAGERS I LONDON IF HE WOULD DARE TO, BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ORIGIN. THEY ARE THE GENOCIDAL PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION.
[andend] - Story at Url.: tinyurl.com/3cuhoz
Thanksgiving Day?
Thanks to whom?
No thanks!
FPF - RELATED REFERENCES & LINKS:
* UNICEF: EVEN IN SO CALLED 'RICH' (FOR WHOM?) COUNTRIES CHILDREN DO NOT FARE TOO WELL - "In rich countries children’s basic needs have been generally met but there is scope for further progress in child well-being." - Url.: www.unicef.org/media/media_38299.html
* US 'BABY GENOCIDE' DEFENDED: Former U.S. PNAC-Secr. of State Madeleine Albright-Korbel, 10 years ago in her comment on the at least HALF A MILLION dead children in Iraq, which now is estimated at ONE MILLION MORE BY UNICEF: "WE THINK THE PRICE IS WORTH IT" - On CBS '60 Minutes' - Url.: tinyurl.com/2vmc8
* DEMOCRACY? - DEATH MADE IN AMERICA - PICTURES MADE BY A DOCTOR WHO WONDERS: ''IF YOUR CONSCIENCE IS STILL ANESTHETIZED'' - Url.: tinyurl.com/pbkyh
* SPREADING DEADLY 'DEMOCRACY' - IRAQ: UN REPORT CITES VAST UNDER-NUTRITION AMONG CHILDREN - Url.: informationclearinghouse.info/article12981.htm
* PRESENT AND PAST - UNICEF REPORTS ON ANOTHER PNAC HOLOCAUST: 'The under-5 infant mortality for 2003 was 110,000 in occupied Iraq, 292,000 in occupied Afghanistan.' - Gideon Polya: 'Non-reportage of US-linked infant mass mortality' - December 23, 2004 - Url.: tinyurl.com/rb3rx
* The 'PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY' is HOLOCAUSTING MORE TODDLERS: "Children Continue To Be the Main Victims Of the U.S. War Crimes." - By Dr. César Chelala - Url.: tinyurl.com/oys87
* "PEOPLE DO NOT FORGET. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget: they also strike back." - 2005 Nobel Literature Prize winner Harold Pinter - Url.: tinyurl.com/9cyeq
* The Nuremberg principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment." - Url.: tinyurl.com/byurp
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