May 12, 2003
Hunger By Numbers
And there's a number of items also in today's Oregonian relating to the state's hunger problem, the various ways to measure the rate of hunger, and the various ways to view those measurements.
On the front page, the paper looks at the numbers and the various studies which produced them:
Oregon hunger statistics have large margins of error that make comparisons with other states risky. And the problem is compounded by the way government studies define "hunger," which is substantially removed from the severe malnutrition and distended bellies associated with Third World hunger.
Researchers and critics have expressed doubts about the No. 1 ranking. But various interest groups have continued using it to move hunger higher on Oregon's agenda and to promote policies designed to cope with it.
Oregon earns its ranking Oregon first earned the "hungriest state" label in 1999. That's when a U.S. Department of Agriculture study first suggested Oregon had the nation's highest percentage of households with one or more members who went hungry at least once in the previous year.
Three later studies -- based on the same survey methods -- also suggested that Oregon led the pack in hunger.
Oregon may indeed be No. 1, but -- because of large sampling errors in the surveys -- it theoretically could have ranked as low as 13th in 1999. Far more likely, Oregon ranks among the top four or five states, says Mark Nord, lead author of the USDA study.
Accompanying this story is a nice graphic detailing different measurements and statistics, which of course is not reproduced online.
Also included in this piece is the following, about which I have to point something out:
John A. Charles, of the free-market Cascade Policy Institute in Portland, has other ideas about the factors that leave too little money for food. "Those factors," he writes in a position paper, "Does Oregon Have a Hunger Problem?" "could include lack of education, divorce, disability, unplanned pregnancy or any number of character flaws such as drug use or lack of a work ethic."
Charles, a critic of Oregon's No. 1 hunger ranking, contends that many of those people constitute a permanent underclass.
"There will be a certain number of people who will always be hungry because they continue to make bad decisions," he says.
This is the same John Charles of the same Cascade Policy Institute I've mentioned previously for saying much the same thing ("To the degree that there is [hunger], it's because of people making bad decisions in their lives.") about hunger in Oregon back in February.
Most often referred to as a "free-market think tank," the Cascade Policy Institute is, of course, actually just another one of those "Social contract? We don't need no stinking socal contract" libertarian groups we can always count on to blame some sort of intrinsic character flaw for people's woes.
Meanwhile, there's also a companion article on some of these hunger numbers.
Finally, there's food drive news:
Residents of Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties donated 285 tons of food to the Oregon Food Bank during Saturday's National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive.
...
The 570,000-pound three-county total is down 70,000 pounds, or 10.9 percent, from the amount donated in the 2002 drive, [food bank spokeswoman, Jean] Kempe-Ware said. She said the decrease might be caused by the weak economy, which is also pushing demand for food assistance to new peaks.
For some sense of context, it seems that "the agency passes out emergency food boxes that weigh roughly 50 pounds and can feed three people for about four days."