Institute Notes: A Dialogue on Overcoming Hunger and Poverty

Improving food security by improving the effectiveness of our aid

In a new briefing paper put out by Bread for the World Institute, John Mellor, former Director-General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Chief Economist at USAID and Professor, Cornell University, argues that the approach taken to delivering aid has made U.S. interventions in the area of agriculture and food security far less effective than it could have been.

In the last few decades, U.S. foreign assistance has largely supported a collection of disparate projects and interventions rather than a coherent, consistent program that is flexible and responsive to conditions in developing countries. As a result, it has not had a transformative impact at the country level. Mellor suggests that USAID should once again focus attention on broad-based measures and approaches that will improve agricultural and economic growth rates, and reduce poverty at the national level. This will involve renewed emphasis on agriculture and rural development, women’s participation in the economy, education, infrastructure and capable national institutions and will require a much more deliberate development strategy carried out over a longer time horizon. To plan and implement such a strategy, USAID urgently needs to rebuild its technical capacity, especially in agriculture, rural development and economics that has been allowed to diminish over the past decades.

Housing and Hunger

Lack of affordable housing is directly related to child hunger, reports Children’s HealthWatch, a Boston-based group, in a new study. Indeed, this may seem like plain old common sense. Now we have good research to make a compelling case for more and better housing assistance as a necessity for reaching the President’s goal of ending child hunger by 2015. 

The study also reinforces the recommendations Bread for the World Institute offers on housing policy in the 2010 Hunger Report, A Just and Sustainable Recovery. 

Children's HealthWatch compared two groups of children in Boston over a 10-year stretch, 1998-2008. One group was families with children receiving public housing support; the other was families with children at the same income level as the former but not on housing assistance. In the households getting assistance, the children were:

• More likely be food secure.
• Less likely to be seriously underweight.
• More likely to be classified as “well” on a composite indicator of child health.

“The research also found that subsidized housing made the greatest difference in protecting the growth of children living in families struggling to put enough food on the table (households classified as food insecure). Food insecure children living in subsidized housing were 52 percent less likely to be seriously underweight than food insecure children on the wait list.” 

Housing is normally a family’s greatest expense. It’s not uncommon for families to spend 50 percent of their income on housing in an expensive metropolitan area like Boston. A housing subsidy reduces housing costs to 30 percent of family income, freeing up money that can be spent on food. No matter what the family earns, they only pay 30 percent of their income on housing. Compare this to families not on assistance:

“In 2008, a family living in the Boston metropolitan area needed to make $54,120 or approximately $26.00 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment renting at the fair market rent of $1,353.8 Members of a family earning minimum wage would need to work a combined 130 hours a week to afford this same apartment—an impossible challenge for families with one or two adults. Boston’s low-income families clearly are looking for a needle in a haystack when it comes to finding an apartment they can afford.” 

The lack of affordable housing available to low-income families has only gotten worse since the recession. Remember, the recession started with a bust in the housing market, which has led to record numbers of foreclosures. This has pushed more families out of homes and into the rental housing market and driving up the cost of rents.

A pediatrician quoted in the study, when asked about treating undernourished children, explained, "What do I really wish I could do? I wish I could write a prescription for affordable housing."

Obama channels 2010 Hunger Report at Jobs Summit

It's clear what the president has been reading. Here's what Huffington Post reports that he said at the White House jobs summit earlier today:

"Not to tip our hand too much, but one of the things I would be surprised if we don't end up moving forward on is an aggressive agenda for energy efficiency and weatherization. Because that is an area where we can get it up and running relatively quickly. You don't need new technologies." 

Obama told the group that clean energy was the nation's best candidate "if we are to shift from the bubble and bust model that we have. ... We want to make a push in this area."

The only way the president could have been more consistent with the 2010 Hunger Report, A Just and Sustainable Recovery, was if he had quoted it directly. 

Key points from the Introduction:

The worst recession since the Great Depression was caused by the collapse of a decade-long housing bubble that had diverted policymakers’ attention from the structural weaknesses undergirding the U.S. economy.

A just and sustainable recovery is possible if policymakers and business leaders are prepared to invest in building a workforce able to meet the challenges of the 21st century, such as controlling greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change and transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy.

And a key point from Chapter 1:

The construction industry could provide millions of jobs and dramatically lower the U.S. share of CO2 emissions if the nation committed to a large-scale effort to improve the energy efficiency of office buildings and housing stock.

Read the 2010 Hunger Report, and know the president's mind.

Greatest threat to recovery: caution

The economy is growing again, albeit anemically. The Bureau of Economic Analysis recently downgraded 2009 third quarter growth from 3.5 to 2.8 percent. Neither of these are encouraging numbers, folks, considering without the federal government pumping money into the economy economic growth would be nonexistent, or more likely still pointing south.

But let’s cut to the chase, unemployment, the indicator that really matters to most people, would be much higher. Tomorrow, the Obama administration is holding a jobs summit to talk with a bunch of experts about what can be done to reduce unemployment. I’ve seen the guest list, and it looks to me like there are plenty of good people invited who can deliver the strong message the administration needs to be hear. More stimulus—fast, please.

Call it a “jobs bill,” if a euphemism is the only way to get Congress to take seriously another stimulus, but this is what lowering the unemployment rate apparently is going to require.  Without new spending by government, unemployment won’t go down because government spending is the only thing creating demand right now in the economy. There are indications that the first stimulus is already running out of strength. From the Wall Street journal yesterday:

Highway-construction companies around the country, having completed the mostly small projects paid for by the federal economic-stimulus package, are starting to see their business run aground, an ominous sign for the nation's weak employment picture.