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Hunger: (a) The uneasy or painful sensation caused
by the lack of food.
(b) The cause of uneasy and painful embarrassment
for Oregon politicians.
It's a little-known fact that the 1991 Legislature passed
a decree stating that inherent in being an Oregonian is
the right to be adequately fed. The lawmakers promised
that by the year 2000 hunger would be eradicated from
the state.
Today that promise is a mockery, as the state scrambles
to understand how Oregon came to be considered the hungriest
state in the union.
Last October, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released
a study that pegged Oregon as the state where the highest
percentage of the population--5.8 percent--reports suffering
from hunger. That's more than Mississippi, more than Louisiana,
more than anyone thought possible.
The news report baffled Gov. John Kitzhaber, who had
been told the percentage of Oregonians experiencing hunger
was about half that reported by the feds.
Regardless of who's right, next week the governor's council
of poverty experts will recommend some ways to remedy
the problem--and a draft copy of the council's report
shows that the winds of criticism blowing against Adult
and Family Services are gaining momentum.
Three years ago, Congress radically overhauled the nation's
welfare system, putting more pressure on social workers
to get people off the dole. The federal hunger report
is the most tangible proof to date that, at least in Oregon,
welfare reform hasn't been a complete success.
Even more troubling than the reported hunger rate is
the fact that Oregon also rates sixth in the nation for
"food insecurity." In answering the survey, 13 percent
of Oregonians state that they have "limited or uncertain
availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods
or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable
foods in socially acceptable ways."
That means one in eight people is worried about getting
food. The report doesn't draw out how they're feeding
themselves, but if the increase in demand on the Oregon
Food Bank is any indication, they're turning to charity
or other means.
The report shocked many Oregonians. Kitzhaber, like many
others, questioned the numbers. While social service advocates
had been telling the governor's staff that things in the
state were reaching crisis level, the state's own research
put the hunger figure at about 3 percent.
"When the USDA numbers came out, they did not match the
data that Oregon has on hunger," says Pam Curtis of Kitzhaber's
staff. "The governor didn't challenge the report, but
he wanted to know why the data were different."
According to Chuck Sheketoff, an independent policy analyst
in Silverton, the reason we don't have the same answers
as the feds is because we haven't been asking the right
questions. Sheketoff's group, Oregon Center for Public
Policy, serves as a research arm for groups like the Oregon
Food Bank and the Hunger Relief Task Force. After the
USDA study came out, OCPP flew into action to analyze
the report and issued a report backing the feds' Oregon
statistics.
"We jammed [a study] out," Sheketoff says. "We'd
heard the governor's office was blasting away on it, and
people came to us and asked if they were good numbers."
His study examined the methodology used by the feds and
concluded that there's little chance they got it wrong.
The USDA numbers come from an average of the past three
years' hunger rates and are based on a sophisticated series
of six to 18 questions that allows researchers to probe
the subtleties of hunger.
Oregon's own hunger stats, by contrast, come from a single
question posed by the Oregon Progress Board.
Every two years, the state board surveys a sample of
the population about a host of issues. Among them is a
single multiple-choice question about hunger, which is
where the 3 percent figure came from.
Sheketoff says the single question doesn't adequately
gauge hunger. He also notes that the board may be missing
the state's hungriest residents: The surveys are conducted
by telephone--which, for a person struggling to put food
on the table, may be an unaffordable luxury.
Meanwhile, the USDA report is adding momentum to the
hunger issue in the capital.
Next week, Kitzhaber's Interagency Coordinating Council
on Hunger will give him a set of recommendations. The
report was scheduled before the USDA shamed Oregon, but
it will now carry additional weight.
The council includes representatives of every agency
that deals with poverty, from Adult and Family Services
to the Department of Corrections. Included in the recommendations
will be more oversight of AFS, which has come under attack
recently for deflecting people off the federal food-stamp
program ["Fire in the Belly," WW, Feb. 23, 2000].
Advocates had been charging for years that AFS has created
a culture of diversion that keeps qualified applicants
away from the federal food-stamp program and forces them
to turn to private charities.
Although no one in the governor's office outright slams
AFS, it appears the USDA report has helped turn the tide
toward closer scrutiny of the agency. The hunger council
is recommending that food-stamp intake hours be expanded
and that the agency do the kind of outreach that will
bring people in the door, not turn them away.
"The extent to which this is an outcome of welfare reform,
we're not sure," says Bob Applegate, spokesman for the
governor, "but we're beginning to suspect that one of
the things we're seeing is that people are defaulting
to food banks over the AFS because it's easier."
Additionally, according to the council, there are basic
things the state is not doing to address hunger, such
as expanding the school meal programs for low-income kids.
Many of the recommendations would tap into federal, not
state, dollars.
What the governor's office does with the recommendations
depends, as always, on money and politics. The council
had planned to recommend that the Oregon Food Bank receive
$2.35 million from the state toward its new $10 million
warehouse, for example, but the governor's office made
it clear that only $1.35 million would be forthcoming.
Still, since the USDA report came out, things have begun
to change. In addition to the ICCH report, the Oregon
Progress Board is working on setting a benchmark for hunger
and plans to change the methodology of its survey to be
in line with the federal study. Additionally, the state
has commissioned another study to survey families qualifying
for low-income energy assistance about their food security.
WEB SITES:
The USDA report : www.econ.ag.gov/epubs/pdf/fanrr2/index.htm
Oregon Center for Public Policy:www.ocpp.org
Oregon Progress Board: www.econ.state.or.us./opb
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Willamette Week | originally
published March 1,
2000
