Child Hunger Costs Central America Billions Yearly

Newsblaze.com recently published an article that says child hunger costs Central America billions of dollars annually. I include an excerpt:

Child undernutrition cost the economies of Central America and the Dominican Republic almost $7 billion – or 6.4 per cent of the region’s gross domestic product (GDP) – in 2004, according to a new joint study by two United Nations agencies today.

“This study is a wake up call to the international community that widespread child hunger is not only a moral and humanitarian issue, but it has economic consequences as well,” WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said. “Clearly, we will not be able to eradicate poverty in the region or in the world for that matter, until we take effective steps to tackle hunger and malnutrition.”

Read entire article on newsblaze.com.

Of course, hunger hurts the economy everywhere. With child hunger costing us all (the people of the world) so much, why do we fail to invest more into fighting it. It would cost less to just end hunger than accept the billions of dollars it costs. Just in Central America, child hunger has caused losses of $7 billion a year. We could end hunger worldwide for less than $6 billion more a year.

It seems that the people in power want world hunger to remain. Perhaps, they need hunger to scare the working-class into obedience. Perhaps the people in power realize that the working-class might stop letting the upper-class rob them, if only the working-class people didn’t fear going hungry. Due to their fear over hunger and poverty, the working-class obediently go to their jobs, even though they get underpaid and overworked.

The powers that be do a good job scaring the working-class. For example, in any given 10-year-period, 40% of United States citizens fall into poverty.

Flawed Definition of Poverty

Carl Bialik recently wrote about the flaws in the way that the World Bank calculates poverty levels. I include an excerpt:

[T]o some economists, the World Bank’s definition of poverty is flawed, arbitrary and tends toward suppressing the numbers. Sanjay Reddy, a Columbia University economist and longtime critic of the bank’s counts, says, “If their dream is a world free of poverty, they ought to know how to measure it.”

The bank defines poverty as living each day on less than the local equivalent of what $1.08 could buy in 1993. That’s the median of national poverty lines in 10 poor countries. Incomes or expenditures are measured by individual countries’ household surveys, then converted to dollars in terms of purchasing power.

Each of these steps introduces potential pitfalls. National poverty lines are set by local governments and there isn’t any standard for defining them. “It is silly to use national poverty lines to arrive at a global poverty line,” says Nanak Kakwani, an economist and visiting scholar at University of Sydney, Australia.

Read entire article by Carl Bialik.

I know nobody who could live on a dollar a day, even in 1993.

We can only accurately measure poverty by whether or not people have access to the necessities or not. To arrive at correct numbers, we must count a person as poor if they cannot stably afford sufficient food, clothes, shelter, and healthcare.

No More Homeless Veterans, Please!

Stephen Funk recently blogged about the cost of war regarding not only financial expenses and body counts, but also the loss of humanity. He even quotes the common adage: “In war there are no winners, only losers.” He expresses the trouble many veterans face after the trauma of war, including homelessness. I include an excerpt:

Many veterans are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological problems, but are not receiving the help that they need and deserve. As a result of these untreated disorders, returning veterans are in danger of following the same path as some Vietnam-era veterans and are at risk of homelessness, drug abuse, and suicide.

Read entire article by Stephen Funk.

I agree with Stephen Funk!

These young men and women enlist in the United States military to protect the people of the United States. To that end, they give up their own freedom, risk their lives, and risk their health. We could never repay them for that, but we don’t even try! Instead, we sit idly and let corrupt politicians and special interest groups hijack the military and send these brave soldiers to needless wars.

We already betrayed the United States troops by allowing the Bush Administration to send them to the needless war in Iraq, which already resulted in the deaths of over 3,400 American troops so far.

Let’s not betray the troops again. When they come home, let’s make sure that they get sufficient medical care, both physical and psychological. Let’s make sure they have sufficient food, clothes, and shelter.

Eating on $3 a Day

Randolph T. Holhut recently wrote an article about the shame of the federal food stamp program in the United States:

The federal food stamp program has never been known as being particularly generous, but the combination of budget cuts and inflation has made it even less so.

For all the talk you hear from economists saying the “core rate” of inflation is stable, you have to remember that the figure excludes two things all of us have to buy — food and energy. A trip to the grocery store or the gas station will tell you that prices are rising higher and faster than the 3 percent inflation rate we hear about.

It’s been 11 years since the food stamp program increased its benefits. It’s been a decade since the federal minimum wage has been increased. Meanwhile, the price of everything has gone up and the poorest among us are the ones who get squeezed the worst.

If you are poor enough to qualify for food stamps, the average benefit per person is about $3 per day per person. That’s $21 a week for food.

[…]

A truly just nation would ensure that no one goes hungry. Unfortunately, there always seems to be money available for war, but Congress too often cries poverty when more money for social welfare programs is sought. This is simply not right.

Read entire article by Randolph T. Holhut.

What is $3 a day supposed to do for a person? It won’t do much to end hunger. How will children born into poverty escape poverty when they only have $3 a day for food? They likely won’t. With stomach pains from hunger and associated troubles, a child won’t get the education needed to get a job that pays sufficiently.

Frankly, society cannot afford to continuously subsidize the food of the poor. We have to help poor people escape poverty and achieve self-sufficiency. To do that, we have to provide more than just food stamps. We need to provide them with education, job training, and job placement. We can ensure that they gain self-sufficiency and no longer need food stamps, by ensuring they end up having a job that pays more than enough for sufficient food, clothes, shelter, and healthcare.

To do that, I propose only giving out food stamps to people who go to school or have a job. Instead of handing out food stamps at social service centers, I suggest handing them out at schools.

40% Poverty Rate in the United States?

The following quote demonstrates a major way in which official poverty statistics understate the poverty epidemic:

“While in any given year 12 to 15 percent of the population is poor, over a ten-year period 40 percent experience poverty in at least one year because most poor people cycle in and out of poverty; they don’t stay poor for long periods. Poverty is something that happens to the working class, not some marginal ‘other’ on the fringes of society.” – Michael Zweig, What’s Class Got to do With It, American Society in the Twenty-first Century, 2004

Poor School Parents vs. Affluent School Parents

Pnnonline.org recently reported that parents’ educational values differ depending on the financial poverty of the school:

When it comes to teachers, what do parents value most — high student test scores or the ability to keep students satisfied? The answer depends in part on what kind of school you go to, according to a new study in the summer issue of Education Next.

According to economists Brian A. Jacob of the University of Michigan and Lars Lefgren of Brigham Young University, parents in high-poverty schools strongly value a teacher’s ability to raise student achievement and appear less concerned about student satisfaction. In more-affluent schools the results are reversed: parents most value a teacher’s ability to keep students happy.

“Our findings suggest that what parents want from school is likely to depend on the educational context in which they find themselves,” Jacob and Lefgren write. In low-income schools where academic resources are scarcer, motivated parents are more likely to request teachers based on their perceived ability to improve academic achievement. On the other hand, in higher-income schools parents seem to respond to the relative abundance of academic resources by seeking out teachers who also increase student satisfaction. This may reflect parental preferences for having their children enjoy school, Jacob and Lefgren speculate, or parental preferences for teachers who emphasize academic facets that increase student satisfaction but are not captured by standardized test scores, such as critical thinking and curiosity.

Read entire article on pnnonline.org.

While interesting, I see the findings as unsurprising. Of course, schools with limited resources need teachers that can do the most with the least. In contrast, rich schools have an overabundance of resources, so they concern themselves with pacifying and satisfying their rich students, who have a reputation for pseudo-rebellion and attitude problems (i.e. stuck up and picky).