Can Food Insecurity Be Reduced in the United States by Improving SNAP, WIC, and the Community Eligibility Provision?

• Author: Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba,John Cook,Justin Pasquariello,Ana Poblacion,Allison Bovell,Richard Sheward,Diana Cutts
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.248
• Date: 01 December 2017

Can Food Insecurity Be Reduced in the United States by

Improving SNAP, WIC, and the Community Eligibility

Provision?

Ana Poblacion , John Cook, Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, Allison Bovell,

Richard Sheward, Justin Pasquariello, and Diana Cutts

Adequate nutrition is essential to children’s rapidly developing brains and bodies. Lack of resources

can lead to inadequate access to suff‌icient food (food insecurity). Fortunately, the United States has

programs to provide children and families with nutritional support. Using simulation modeling, we

identify three policies that ensure young children have reliable access to food. (i) If SNAP benef‌its

are increased by basing benef‌it calculations on the Low Cost Food Plan (vs. the Thrifty Food Plan),

participant families with children have an 8 percent increase in food purchasing power, and 5.31

percent of food-insecure people in those families become food secure. (ii) If WIC age-eligibility is

increased from age 5 years to 6 years, 1.47 percent of newly eligible 5-year-olds’ families increase

their food purchasing power, and become food secure. (iii) Through school meal programs under

current Community Eligibility Program (CEP) criteria, 3.17 percent and 3.77 percent of all

children whose family food purchasing power is increased by participation in the National School

Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program, free and reduced-price meals respectively, shift

into higher income-to-poverty-ratio categories. Consequently, 3.23 percent of food-insecure School

Meals participants’ families became fully food secure. If CEP eligibility criteria increase, these

improvements are jeopardized.

KEY WORDS: food insecurity, SNAP, WIC, school meal

Introduction

Food is one of our most basic needs (Poblacion, Cook, & Taddei, 2016). Along

with oxygen, water, regulated body temperature, shelter, sex, and sleep, food is a

basic necessity for human survival. Food and food security are in the lowest level

of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1970). Until we satisfy our need for

food, we are not much interested in trying to fulf‌ill any of our higher needs, such

as love, empathy, friendship, intimacy, self-esteem, independence, knowledge,

appreciation of beauty, self-fulf‌illment, concern for the public good, or helping

others.

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 9, No. 4, 2017

435

doi: 10.1002/wmh3.248

#2017 Policy Studies Organization

In January of 2014 the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Right to

Food (SRRF) published his f‌inal report based on 6 years of investigation,

discovery, and “listening.” In Section II of the report the SRRF summarizes what

it means to have “a right to food” as follows:

The right to food is the right of every individual, alone or in community

with others, to have physical and economic access at all times to

suff‌icient, adequate and culturally acceptable food that is produced and

consumed sustainably, preserving access to food for future generations.

Individuals can secure access to food (a) by earning incomes from

employment or self-employment; (b) through social transfers; or (c) by

producing their own food, for those who have access to land and other

productive resources. Through these channels, which often operate

concurrently, each person should have access to a diet that as a whole

contains a mix of nutrients for physical and mental growth, development

and maintenance, and physical activity that are in compliance with

human physiological needs at all stages throughout the life cycle and

according to gender and occupation. (De Schutter, 2014)

Given the nature of food as a “basic necessity,” access to adequate nutritious

food can be considered a basic human right (Maslow, 1970). That is, we humans

all have a right to adequate nutritious food, and that right is a basic right. Basic

rights are special in that they carry a meaning and status that sets them apart

from other rights. Philosopher Henry Shue def‌ines a “basic right” as a right

whose nature is such that, if we do not receive the object of that right (food in

this case), we are prevented from seeking to fulf‌ill any of our other rights (by

death from starvation, or debilitation from food insecurity and hunger) (Shue,

1980). Shue also reminds us that all rights are the right to something; the object of

the right, in this case, is food.

Moreover, a right is not just an abstract idea that we all should have the

object of the right (food), or that it would be nice if we had the object of the right.

Neither are rights optional, or up to the arbitrary whim of any particular

policymakers or politicians. Rights are real, concrete, and they embody the

standing to make a claim on the object of the right. Shue goes on to point out that

all rights, and especially basic rights, also imply duties. If someone has a right to

something, then all others have a duty to actively avoid preventing that person

from obtaining the object of that right. But basic rights imply even stronger

duties, as Shue (1980) notes; if a person has a basic right, then not only do all

others have a duty to actively avoid preventing that person from obtaining the

object of that right, they also have a duty to ensure that the person obtains the

object of that right.

Our basic right to food gives us standing to make a claim on food, or to

demand it. And if we lack the resources necessary to obtain adequate food, then

society (through our democratically elected governments) has a duty to provide it

(Shue, 1980). That is the nature of basic rights, and the reason they are precious

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