In the first week of November, thousands in the US were out seeking food - from hotels for leftovers to food banks to seeking doles from near and dear ones. Millions spent anxious moments thinking of imminent hunger spells in the immediate future. A local newspaper reported a single mother’s face off with hunger, “I will get hunger pains at some point, but I just ignore them. I just tell myself I’m on a fast.”
The US government is under its longest ever shutdown. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, earlier known as ‘food stamp’), in implementation since the 1930s and the country’s most consequential food security net, didn’t have money to disburse. As a result, the cash benefit couldn’t be transferred to some 40 million beneficiaries of SNAP for November. On November 6, a federal judge ordered the federal government to fully transfer the benefit irrespective of the budgetary constraints.
The food stamp programme was never stopped during earlier government shutdowns. But this time — in just a week’s time — its closure showed how fragile food security has been in the world’s largest economy for over 134 years. The federal judge said in his order, “Sixteen million children are immediately at risk of going hungry.” He added, “This should never happen in America.”
That is a desirable situation, but the country has, of late, been unable to manage its poverty and hunger levels. The world of the SNAP beneficiaries is that of utter desperation and destitution surrounded by over 900 billionaires and the world’s first would-be trillionaire. While President Donald Trump’s government had not reacted on the compliance of the court order, during the same time, Tesla approved a $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk.
Every eighth American depends on SNAP to afford groceries. This indicates the level of earning as well — a family of three with an annual income of below $35,000 qualifies for this programme. Under SNAP, on average, a person receives a cash transfer of $6/day. Surveys say that every fifth household that gets SNAP benefits has one child, an older adult or a member with disability. This tells the acute hunger and poverty story of the US. And the inequality that seems to be perpetuating poverty among the poor.
The US Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) data shows that 43.69 million (12.9 per cent) people lived in poverty in 2024. It is a bit over the preceding year level. Every seventh American child lived in poverty. Poverty among people above 65 years of age has also increased over the 2023 level. On the inequality term, the US has the highest score among industrialised countries — the wealthiest 20 per cent Americans account for 52 per cent of the country’s income, and 20 per cent of the lowest earning account for just 3 per cent.
Joel Berg, head of the non-profit Hunger Free America (HFA), attributes the seemingly increasing poverty level to not just systemic reasons but also to the cut in aid. Said Berg, “This (poverty) data should be a wakeup call for federal elected officials on the need to reverse the cruel and economically harmful cuts to domestic food aid and health care. We are at the brink of the greatest American hunger crisis since the Great Depression.” Quoting government data, HFA says that “the number of Americans who didn’t have enough to eat over two one-week periods increased by 55.2 per cent between August/September 2021 and August/September 2024.” And it attributes this to “the expiration of the federal rollback of expanded Child Tax Credits, the end of expanded SNAP, and the termination of universal school meals, coupled with the impact of inflation.”