Matt Yglesias recently had a post on the proposed cuts in the SNAP program (a.k.a. foodstamps program) intended to offset proposed increases in child nutrition programs (e.g. school lunch programs). Yglesias cites this Monica Potts post that gives some background:
It’s worth noting that the increases in the food-stamp program were designed in the stimulus bill to be phased out once food-price inflation caught up to the expanded benefits, but because inflation was lower than expected, the benefits were going to last longer than anyone originally expected. It’s hard to imagine a situation in which politicians wouldn’t view those bigger-than-expected increases as free money. And it’s a small comfort to know the pot was raided for good rather than for ill.
This got me thinking of Mollie Orshansky, the brains behind the U.S. official poverty measure. That measure took the cheapest of four “economy food plans” and multiplied it by three, since at the time, in 1963, food constituted roughly one-third of the average family budget. Longtime critics of this measure have pointed out that the cost of food has increased much more slowly than the price of nonfood staples in the average family’s budget. Since the amount allocated for nonfood items is determined by the amount “needed” for foodstuffs, the official poverty measure fails to take differential rates of price growth into account.
This historical lag in food prices doesn’t necessarily entail a similar expected lag after the passage of the stimulus bill; but it is somewhat ironic that the issue of slow food price inflation has come up again in the context of policies ostensibly designed to aid the poor and near-poor but which end up adding insult to injury. After all, perhaps one way to make amends for screwing over the poor with an inadequate measure of non-food related resource deprivation might be to allow them a bit more in the way of food-related resources.
For more on recent and salutary developments in how the U.S. measures poverty, see this Yglesias post from March.
upyernoz | 11-Aug-10 at 4:35 pm | Permalink
so after not posting for months, you put up a post titled “hiatus”. and then, less then a week later, you put up another post?
i think you’re doing it wrong.
Paul | 11-Aug-10 at 8:02 pm | Permalink
:)