For my Annotated Bibliography I decided to stick with my original core reading, “How a Government Computer Glitch Forced Thousands of Families to go Hungry” I chose to stick with this piece because of my interest in the social service field. I’m not exactly digging into how the government plays a role in food stamps, but how people view them and the affects that they may be causing.
1.) Baum, C. (2011). The Effects of Food Stamps on Obesity. Southern Economic Journal. Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.evansville.libproxy.ivytech.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=1c20942d-8f60-4bc8-b41d-c14a6f208430@sessionmgr4008&vid=5&hid=4210
Baum’s article discusses how food stamps may be effecting the population and their weight. As stated above
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Choosing this reading is so I can break down the bad of the program and point out the flaws. The article discusses a married couple hiding their marriage simply to continue receiving these benefits, but why was it so easy? I think that’s what caught my eye about it. My source affects my view in two different ways, how is this happening and why are people still getting away with it?
3.) Smith, R. (2013, August). “Preventing Poverty.” Washington Viewpoint. Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.evansville.libproxy.ivytech.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=1c20942d-8f60-4bc8-b41d-c14a6f208430%40sessionmgr4008&vid=13&hid=4105
For my last article, “Preventing Poverty” is discussing how the government is spending billions of dollars to provide families in poverty the help they need, but why they aren’t getting to the point of what is causing poverty. I selected this piece because the fact that the government is just putting ‘Band-Aids’ on the problem and not getting to the source is what bothers me. The most fascinating point that Smith makes is that the government is just temporary solving a problem instead of getting to the bottom of it, this source doesn’t exactly affect my view of the problem because this is something I agree
With more and more people becoming unemployed and applying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), it is imperative that we understand the benefits as well as problems this causes. Even while researching this topic and talking to some of my family and friends about it, it surprised me the amount of those who do not understand food stamps. Coming from the SNAP website, “Food stamps offer nutritional assistance to millions of eligible low-income individuals and families and provides economic benefits to communities” (United States). This program helps millions of people per year and gives upwards of $75 billion and rising. With the prices of food increasing due to inflation, beneficiaries are receiving around $400 at most per month. Using the Electronic benefit transfer systems (EBT), beneficiaries can buy goods from a grocery store using a credit-card like transaction, which takes the money off of their card. The benefits are received monthly on a specific date and vary in amounts from person to person. One family may receive $300 per month because they have three kids and need the extra money, while another may receive $100 or less depending on financial status. The application process includes completing and filing an application form, being interviewed, and verifying facts crucial to determining eligibility. In the past, these applications did not require a drug screening to get benefits, but more and more states are adopting this. There are many drawbacks to SNAP as well such as taking money from working people’s paychecks every week and people abusing the system. Talking about a very opinionated subject, we must remove bias and answer whether or not the Food Stamp system should be limited.
Pan, L., Sherry, B., Njai, R., & Blanck, H. M. (2012). Food Insecurity Is Associated with Obesity among US Adults in 12 States. Journal Of The Academy Of Nutrition & Dietetics, 112(9), 1403-1409. doi:10.1016/j.jand.2012.06.011
The idea for a food stamp program was not thought of by just one person, but by various people. The leaders of the program’s establishment were Henry Wallace, and Milo Perkins. The system worked by having customers purchase however many orange stamps they would probably use on groceries that week. For every dollar spent on orange stamps, they would receive 50 cents worth of blue stamps. They then could use the blue stamps, but only to buy food that was determined to be excess by the Department of Agriculture. Over the course of four years after the program had been out, it provided relief to nearly 20 million people. The first person caught violating the system was Nick Salzano in 1939.
When writing Myth of the Welfare Queen, David Zucchino exposes the lives of two women who are honestly using the American welfare system in the hopes that families across the
In the year 2015, around 40 million U.S. citizens were food insecure (Randall para. 3). Food insecurity can be defined in paragraph 3 by “[having] difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. This 12.7% of American citizens also contains another group - children. Aged 10-17, 6.8 million adolescents struggle with a food insecurity. There have been several years of cuts to the social programs designed to help these people, along with the Great Recession continuing to leave an impact on the U.S. economy (para. 6). Under the Obama administration, $8.6 billion was cut from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps. From 1993-2001 under the Clinton administration, former President Bill Clinton’s administration “gutted the welfare system” (para. 15). Because of these budget cuts, the families who rely on food assistance from the government have been allotted less throughout the years. From a sociological perspective, the concepts of sociological imagination, class stratification, and social location are in effect when it comes to child hunger in the United States. Being hungry is an issue larger than any one individual can control.
Morin, Rich. "The politics and demographics of food stamp recipients." Pew Research Center RSS. Pew Research Center, 12 July 2013. Web. 11 May 2014.
Food insecurity is an issue faced by millions of Americans every day, and the biggest group affected by this is working families with children. Food insecurity is so big that the United States government has now recognized it and provided a definition for it. The United States government has defined food insecurity as “a household level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food” (USDA.gov). Food banks and anti-hunger advocates agree that some of the causes of food insecurity are stagnant wages, increase in housing costs, unemployment, and inflation of the cost of food. These factors have caused food banks to see a change in the groups of people needing assistance. Doug O’Brien, director of public policy and research at Chicago-based Second Harvest says “’we’ve seen a real shift in who we serve. A decade ago, it was almost always homeless, single men and chronic substance abusers. Now we have children and working families at soup kitchens’” (Koch). These families that are feeling the effects of food insecurity will not be only ones affected by it, but all of America. Studies have shown that there is a link between food security, performance in the classroom, and obesity. If this issue is not faced head on, America will have a generation of children not fully prepared for the workforce and high health insurance rates due to obesity health issues.
Welfare should help people in their time of need until they get back on their
Before the time of the Food Stamp Act in 1964 was mainly those who were poor and those who were in the 5.6% unemployment rate. The United States enacted this to help improve the agricultural economy and also to make good use of the amplitude of food being used. So this way food is able to be brought into poor income households, also maximizing the usage of food from going to waste. The nutritional program that was designed to help health problems such as, low birth weights, anemia, and osteoporosis.
According to Dolgoff and Feldstein (2003), “the needs and goals of the Food Stamp Program are to alleviate hunger and malnutrition by enabling low-income households to buy a nutritious adequate diet” (p. 132). The program also improved the market for local merchants to produce food for eligible low-income households and other agencies such as the School Lunch Program which safeguard the health and wel...
Because of these circumstances of food stamp abuse, the government has been working to help prevent fraud and abuse to food stamps from happening. The process is beginning to be improved, but the process is intricate and takes time. Each month the Department of Agriculture calculates the amount of money they need to give a family in
Levine, James. "Poverty and Obesity in the U.S." Diabetes 60.11 (2011): 2667-2668. Web. 21 Oct. 2013.
People abuse the privilege of food stamps (SNAP) everyday throughout the world. Some may get caught, and others might not. Although, everything that’s done in dark comes to the light some point in time. Food Stamps (SNAP) is only suppose to be for those who can not afford to purchase food, because either their poor, or their living below poverty with a low income. However, food stamps are only for purchasing of food, and food only. You can not purchase, liquor, cigarettes, clothing or anything that’s not editable. Of course people break laws each and everyday throughout society. My mom works for the government (United States Postal Service) on the west side of Chicago, and on her route there’s a “corner store” on
Inevitably, food insecurity tends to be a never ending cycle. Often a constant battle of deciding whether to eat or pay the bills. A big misconception is the idea that simply because some low income families receive government assistance, they should be fine. On the contrary, many families who receive government assistance such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) still do not have enough, and therefore are food insecure. Another problem is that if one does not meet the requirements to receive public assistance they must rely on food banks and soup kitchens for sustenance. Also, it is not only single parents who are food insecure, but two employed parent households with low income, who at the end of the day can’t seem to make ends meet. Furthermore, some people assume that those who receive any form of government assistance are just cheating the system and are lazy, however ultimately those who seek it are really in need. I believe that just because they are asking for help does not mean they want to depend on welfare the rest of their lives, instead they are grasping an opportunity to help them get where they need to be both health and income wise. Clearly, I support government assistance programs, but I do believe they should be regulated in a different manner. For example, the
This nation has a problem: more of its citizens rely on the federal government for help than to support themselves with a full time job. Poverty has many negative effects on the people who suffer from it and on the economy. Everyone needs to be made aware of poverty and the many negative effects it has on people. There are things that could be done to help reduce the amount of people that are in poverty. Reducing poverty would decrease health risks, strengthen the middle class, and help the democracy.