The physics of poverty, the gravity of shame
According to the laws of gravity, a rock and a feather should fall to the Earth at the exact same speed. Like many of the laws of physics, atmospheric variables may alter the equation. A puff of air under the feather may mean it floats for miles, just as the rock gets pulled straight down to Earth.
The physics of poverty and the gravity of shame keep generations of families glued to the ground. Poverty has its own faster and stronger gravitational pull that ensures few children and families are ever able to escape it. Privilege, on the other hand, creates the ideal atmospheric conditions for children to not just stay aloft, but float for as far as the eye can see. The children have the same potential; it is the different environments that yield different results.
New Mexico just became the first state in the country to prohibit schools from a practice called “lunch shaming” through the Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights. Lunch shaming involves making the children become pawns in an attempt to collect money from parents.
If the global outcry that occurred when news of the lunch shaming practice got out is any indication, society has reached a consensus on something: Starving and humiliating schoolchildren is bad policy and something nobody wants to see continuing. In an era of moral relativism and political division, this is progress.
If we can all agree that children should not be starved and shamed, can we also agree on a few other things? Can we also agree that the elderly, families with children, the unemployed with nary a job opportunity in sight and the disabled should not go hungry?
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, governed by the Farm Bill, is the nation’s largest and most effective antihunger program and is governed by the Farm Bill’s carrots and sticks.
SNAP serves almost 20 million children in a typical month, including about 1 in every 3 preschoolers and nearly 5 million seniors. SNAP lifts millions of Americans out of poverty, reduces food insecurity, and improves health and educational outcomes for children.
Here’s what we should ask of our delegation as they work on the 2018 Farm Bill:
Increase benefits. Increasing benefit levels for all SNAP recipients would reduce food insecurity and allow families to buy healthier, more varied foods.
No block granting of SNAP. Proposals to convert SNAP from a federal program to a block grant will create serious problems for families by limiting funding for SNAP and capping a state’s ability to react to economic downturns and population shifts.
Provide more support for the unemployed. SNAP is already structured to encourage and reward work by allowing an earned-income deduction and avoiding benefit cliffs. If you look at SNAP households with adults who are able to work, more than half of them do.
Childless adults lose their benefits after just three months of unemployment. States can waive that rule when unemployment rates are high, and it is essential that they keep that authority to avoid needless cruelty to unemployed Americans.
Children and families are not physics experiments. We don’t want to be a society that creates an atmosphere for success for some and for failure for others. The formula for success versus failure is a simple one — demand policies that create equilibrium, and free children and families from the physics of poverty and the gravity of shame.