Food stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle<\/a>\u201d appeared <\/span>in the Washington Post a while back, and a reader, Jim, linked to it in a comment on my prior post on food stamps.\u00a0 I had read it before, and was disturbed by the \u201cbinge-buying\u201d on the first of the month, but now I want to look at it more closely in terms of the couple that\u2019s being profiled:<\/p>\nThey\u2019re young \u2014 she\u2019s 21, his age is unmentioned \u2014 with a toddler and a three-year-old, and, with no particular skills, they\u2019ve bounced between unskilled jobs (fast food, grocery store work) and unemployment.\u00a0 Currently they earn a combined $1,700 per month, low enough to qualify for a partial food stamp benefit.\u00a0 The article mentions some of their expenses\/debts (it\u2019s not clear which are monthly expenses and which are bills they\u2019re behind on):\u00a0 $600 for rent, $110 for cell phones, $75 to the tattoo parlor, $840 to the electric company.\u00a0 They have one car (he doesn\u2019t drive) for which they pay $90 a week, due to their poor credit.<\/p>\n
This is what she buys:\u00a0 at the first store, cookies that the three-year-old grabbed, two boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch ($2.49), a four-gallon bottle of cooking oil ($5.99) and three gallons of milk ($3.10), plus 15 other items totaling $49.20.\u00a0 At Walmart she abandons her list because of the childrens\u2019 tantrums, \u201cpicking up anything that looked healthy or filling and dropping it into the cart.\u201d\u00a0 Goldfish and string cheese that one of the kids picked up and opened get purchased.\u00a0 Play-doh\u00a0that the child opened up.\u00a0 And enough other groceries to total $168.\u00a0 \u201cShe had spent about two weeks of SNAP money on groceries that would last seven or eight days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, the article describes the frenzy of the first of the month in places so impoverished that nearly all the customers are on food stamps, so it may be that the chaos caused the tantrums and the shopping frenzy.\u00a0 Certainly the program is poorly administered if there\u2019s\u00a0routinely first-of-the-month chaos.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
But, of course, the very concept of the \u201csupplemental\u201d program is that, for the working poor, a part of the food budget is supposed to come out of their paycheck.\u00a0 Now, I suppose, there\u2019s a bigger issue, if an unemployed person gets any number of additional benefits \u2014 cash welfare, housing subsidies, and the like \u2014 but the working poor are actually in worse shape financially so simply can\u2019t swing it to pay their rent, basic utilities and other unavoidable expenses, and have any money left over for food, which becomes \u201coptional\u201d in that it\u2019s easier to find a food pantry than the cash for bills.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
But it also doesn\u2019t feel right for $217.20 to last for \u201cseven or eight\u201d days, for a family with two small children.\u00a0 This is well beyond my weekly grocery budget, with three school-aged boys plus my husband and I \u2014 though, to be sure, the article doesn\u2019t specify if this is solely the food stamp spending or if it includes diapers and other purchases.\u00a0 I would also expect that the family would qualify for WIC, which would cover the milk and other basic items for the children.\u00a0 On the other hand, I generally pay no more than $2.50 for a gallon of milk, so maybe the overall food prices are higher in Rhode Island?<\/p>\n
Yet it\u2019s clear that this couple\u2019s youth is also part of the problem \u2014 getting so frazzled as to randomly grab food, getting lunch at Burger King afterwards, even having \u201cspoiled vegetables\u201d in the fridge (which happens to the best of us, but is also something you\u2019d expect the \u201cfood-insecure\u201d to determinedly avoid).\u00a0 Look:\u00a0 I have shopped with a toddler and a three-year-old.\u00a0 It\u2019s not fun.\u00a0 But I simply don\u2019t recall buying things not on the shopping list due to tantrums.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
At the same time, the food stamp allotments are based on the USDA Thrifty Food Plan, which, so far as I can tell, consists of quantities of ingredients, but without any kind of model meal plan demonstrating how these foods can be transformed into healthy, if repetitive, meals.\u00a0 And it is troublesome that the allotment is the same for all regions of the country, despite variability in food costs.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
There are meal plans out there \u2014 the work of bloggers and such organizations as the Iowa State University extension<\/a>, who\u00a0posted weekly menus created by students in the dietetic program.\u00a0 How much help are food stamp recipients given in the art of meal planning and cooking thrifty meals (especially meals which can be prepared easily)?\u00a0 My hunch is, not much.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story, \u201cFood stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle\u201d appeared in the Washington Post a while back, and a reader, Jim, linked to it in a comment on my prior post on food stamps.\u00a0 I had read it before, and was disturbed by the \u201cbinge-buying\u201d on the first of the month, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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