Food Insecurity in the U.S.

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The issue of food insecurity is one that is very prevalent in the United States.  Food insecurity, according to the USDA, can be defined in different ranges; either low food security or very low food insecurity. Low food security is when the quality or variety of one’s diet is undesirable, with not much, if any, reduced food intake.  Very low food security is different from low food security in that reports of reduced food intake are made as well as the issues that are seen in low food security.  Food is something that those who have never faced food insecurity often take for granted, however, for people who have faced it, it is a major issue, while affecting different groups of people in the United States disproportionately.  As seen in the graph below, 10.5 percent of U.S. households in 2020 were food insecure and, of these households, 6.6% had low food security and 3.9% had very low food security.

However, as I mentioned before, different households were more likely to have experienced food insecurity than others in the United States.  For instance, as seen in the graph below, rates of food insecurity were much higher in Black (21.7%)  and Hispanic (17.2%) households, showing how food insecurities disproportionately affect people of different races in the U.S.  Households helmed by a single woman with children were also much more likely to become food insecure, with 27.7% of them being food insecure.

Nutrition is a major factor into one’s health and those who are food insecure are less likely to have the nutrition one needs to live happy, healthy lives.  Until food insecurity for everyone is solved in the United States without the disparities in different groups as seen above, food security and insecurity will remain a major contributing factor to health problems for many in the U.S.

 

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics/

Social problems of a greater magnitude

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The social problems described in my classmates’ posts ranging from but not limited to food insecurity, US incarceration rates, and unequal access to education may be a symptom of an arguably widening and bigger issue in the US not unrelated to sustainability and social justice topics. According to a Pew Research study published in February ’22, since 2007 earnings for middling workers in the US have remained stagnant while in that same time frame the wealth of upper-income families has exploded by about $200,000 give or take measured in 2018 median dollars. Simply put income inequality in the US is widening and one hedge fund worker and now author Kathy O’Neil in her book Weapons of Math Destruction argues that as we progress into the information age technology can produce some potential negative externalities for low-income people one of them being an over-policing of low-income neighborhoods. This tendency increases the initial chance of people living in these communities ending up in jail for first-time offenses, but she also adds that the recidivism rate, that is the tendency to go back, increases too. Additionally, these are the same communities that often face food insecurity, unstable employment, and unequal access to education at least from a statistical standpoint and perhaps sometimes a very real standpoint in the aggregate. I think from this standpoint we can ask ourselves what types of opportunities does technology offer us middle-class folk that we can use to increase the overall value of our society from top to bottom(monetary, agriculturally, etc.), and what necessary but difficult changes must we adopt to prevent divisive ideologies from distracting from the main focus of our society’s goal to survive and thrive.

Housing Disparities Reveal Racial Discrimination

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Safe and affordable housing is a primary concern to almost every single person living in the United States.  However, there are many disparities in the current housing system in the United States that reveal deeper levels of racism and discrimination.  As the graphs below show, the financial status and net worth of different races are shown.  The important thing to understand is that while financial status is the here and now, net worth is even more important since that becomes generational wealth for the future.  Nationally, black households only earned 61 cents per $1 of white households.  This disparity significantly affects the ability to afford housing and this form of racism persists over generations.  A black family is 16 times more likely than white families to experience 3 generations of poverty.  Even when both races make similar poverty-level wages, white households have an average net worth of $18,000 in savings while black families have either no savings or negative.  These racial disparities all play into housing issues.  When the recession hit in 2008, black and hispanic families that were approved for loans were 2.4 times more likely to receive a subprime(loans for people deemed to have difficulty paying back a loan) than white families.  Income and net worth are massive factors pertaining to housing and the differences between races in these areas emphasize racial discrimination that heavily affects non-white households’ ability to own a home and secure money for themselves and future generations.

Works Cited:

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/understanding-and-addressing-racial-and-ethnic-disparities-in-housing/

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclusion-segregation/

 

 

The impact of food insecurities

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Social justice is fairness as it manifests in society. That includes fairness in healthcare, employment, housing, and more. Whilst some societies focus on maximizing social justice one of the major areas that they are lacking is the availability of food. “Food insecurities” as it is defined refers to a lack of available financial resources for food at the household level. This article, Feeding America states that   “Hunger + Health explores the impact of food insecurity as a social determinant of health and its effect on individual and population health outcomes” This demonstrates that the availability of food impacts individuals in an unfair way, all of which include race, socioeconomic positions, along with the area that you live in. These factors contribute to the issue of how a lack of food can negatively impact a person’s life. Another article by Feeding America elaborates on the effects of hunger. Food insecurities can have a devastating effect on a child’s development. These effects include chronic illnesses such as  asthma,  anemia, and other behavioral problems. These  Behavioral problems include hyperactivity, anxiety, and aggression in school-age children. This is detrimental to both their mental and physical state and it is exemplary of the consequence of facing food insecurities,  economic challenges, and hunger.  This may contribute to secondary effects such as academic achievement and future economic prosperity. The Gw Hatchet publication has put out an article investigating the proportionality of food insecurities between white and non-white students on a college campus. With that being said, the data below demonstrates the correlation between race and food insecurities. “About half or more of nonwhite individuals face food insecurities while only 31 percent of white individuals face food insecirities. “ This evidence brings emphasis to racial and socioeconomic disparities that globally occur and create a disproportional availability of resources in low class communities compared to middle and high class communities.

References:

Recognizing the Gender Wage Gap

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The gender wage gap is something that lawmakers have tried to address through legislation, such as the Equal Pay Act, however it is still a very prevalent problem in America. Today, a woman earns about 79 cents for every dollar that a man earns. This is clearly unfair and shows that gender discrimination is still impacting individuals despite the progress and the attempts to close this wage gap. Women of color specifically earn the least when compared to the wages of men and white women. This may be due to the intersectionality of the identities of women of color (including gender and race), further proving that race and gender are factors that unfairly impact earnings. For example, Hispanic women earn only 55% of the earnings of men. This large gender wage gap is a clear example of unequal treatment based on gender in today’s society. It has been predicted that the gender wage gap will hopefully be closed by 2059. While this is great, the current wage gap (as shown in the following bar charts) is something that is actively impacting every woman and marginalized identity group right now without a quick fix to refocus professional earnings on talent rather than gender.

citations: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/these-5-charts-show-how-big-the-pay-gap-is-between-men-and-women/

US incarceration rates in 2010

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This bar chart explains US incarceration rates based on race and ethnicity from 2010. It shows that blacks are disproportionately imprisoned as compared to all other races. It shows that black individuals are over five times more likely to be incarceration than white individuals. It also shows that American Indian or Alaskan Native are the second most commonly incarcerated ethnicities which is somewhat surprising to me because I feel like this population is so commonly overlooked in research and most commonly put into an “other” category. Often statistics and research leaves them out and only chooses to include Latinx, Black, Asian, and White groups in their research so it is interesting to understand the racial profiling and potential targeting that leads to incarceration that American Indians and Alaskan Natives are subject to as well. This goes for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders as well, coming in as the third most commonly incarcerated ethnicity in 2010. Higher incarceration rates of people of color is indicative of many social justice issues in the US. Such as being indicative of issues regarding over policing minority and lower income communities as well as issues of racial profiling. Racial profiling issues can be  connected back to the war on drugs period in American history in which minority populations and people of color were tied to drug scares and labeled as dangerous criminals. Unfortunately, the implications of this war on drugs still exists today and can be seen in greater incarceration rates of people of color in the US.

Unequal Access to Education

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Every child has a right to an education, however millions across the globe do not have access to education (this is not to mention the children who do have access to a low quality education). According to 2012 numbers, 120 million children were not enrolled in elementary school or middles school, with 50 million of those children living in Sub-Saharan Africa. Education is the key to improving communities and societies, without it, poverty lines increase and social mobility becomes harder. The chart below shows the number of children not enrolled in elementary of middle school in the year 2000 compared to the year 2012 across the world. The green bars indicate female children not enrolled in school while the blue bars represent male children not enrolled in school. As you can see, it is more common for girls to not be enrolled in school than it is for boys, which is another social injustice. More work needs to be done to ensure that children have access to quality education!

https://www.statista.com/chart/3180/out-of-school-children/

Are rising temperatures dramatically effect people of color?

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Environmental racism is a concept that often gets overlooked however it’s a big issue that is connected to many aspects of society. One way that you can look at this is through climate change and the demographics of where people live. According to NPR, in a study of 108 urban areas nationwide, the formerly redlined neighborhoods in nearly every city studied were hotter than those not subjected to redlining. The temperature difference in some areas was nearly 13 degrees. There has been a systematic disparity on who is getting affected by climate change the most. If you look at a global level “counties with large African American populations are exposed to extreme temperatures 2 to 3 more days per year than those counties with smaller African American populations.” In the next decades, this trend is only going to increase. If you look at the graph below it shows the different emission paths and the number of unlivable months out of a year a place will experience because of heat. This graph shows the many places that will become unlivable, with the ones most affected being around the equator which in many places has a high percentage of people of color. With temperature increase and the creation of unlivable zones will trigger a series of mass migrations which is both a social and humanitarian crisis that should be important to everyone.

 

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Income Inequality in America

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Income inequities have always been around in the United States. Yet, over the past few decades the gap has grown. As seen in the pie charts you can see that since 1989 the top ten percent of income earners have grown 8% totaling a total 50% of all of the income in the United states. In 2016 the bottom 50% of income earners made between $0-53,000, the middle 50%-90% made between $53,000-$176,000, and the top ten percent make over $176,000 people.  The inequities are clear. What the chart doesn’t show is what percent of the wealth that the 1% have. According to Smart Asset, a personal finance website, the 1% makes nearly $600,000 a year, which shows that there is are huge inequalities among the top 10%.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/august/wealth-inequality-in-america-facts-figures

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/01/24/how-much-money-you-have-to-earn-to-be-in-the-top-1percent-in-every-us-state.html

Food Insecurity- Issue of Equity

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As a Sociology major, looking at the ways in which different social justice issues affect individuals isn’t new to me. However, what is new to me is looking at these issues through a mathematical lens. The issue of food insecurity and hunger is not just an issue surrounding food, but an issue surrounding equity. Consider the following chart;

The information on this chart shows that the rate of White college students facing food insecurity is 36%, which is quite high. However, other demographics have even higher percentages. Hispanic college students food insecurity rate is 47%, Black is college students rate is 54% and Indigenous college students rate is 60%. This data shows that food insecurity is an issue of racial equality and equity.

One of the main contributing factors to the difference of food insecurity among demographics is the difference in pay wages. Consider another chart below;

This chart displays that no matter the level of education, White employees will be paid more than Black and Hispanic workers. When an individual is paid more, they have more access to purchase food and avoid food insecurity. Hence, White workers being paid more definitely contributes to White individuals having the lowest rate of food insecurity among college students, compared to Black, Indigenous and Hispanic college students.

Lastly, as we have previously discussed, healthier food options are more expensive than unhealthy food options, such as fast food chains (McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, etc). With this in mind, families of lower income are going to be more likely to eat at fast food restaurants given the low prices. Consider this last data set;

This data shows that the rate of obesity among White students is only 29.3% while it is 35.9% among Black children and 38.2% among Hispanic children. This makes sense given everything that has been discussed thus far in this blog. Eating cheap fast food more often will result in higher obesity rates. The way that poverty can have an affect on so many other factors such as physical and mental health displays how capitalistic our society truly is.