Reducing senior poverty and hunger : the role of the Older Americans Act : hearing before the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, United States Senate, one Hundred Thirteenth Congress, first session, on examining reducing senior poverty and hunger, including S. 1028, to reauthorize and improve the Older Americans Act of 1965, J

Reducing senior poverty and hunger : the role of the Older Americans Act : hearing before the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, United States Senate, one Hundred Thirteenth Congress, first session, on examining reducing senior poverty and hunger, including S. 1028, to reauthorize and improve the Older Americans Act of 1965, J

Hunger is a serious threat facing millions of seniors in the United States. Despite this important public health threat, we know very little about the face of hunger among seniors, the causes of senior hunger, its consequences for the well-being of seniors, or what will happen in the next twenty years with respect to hunger among senior Americans. Although federally-funded programs including the Elderly Nutrition Program (ENP) and the Food Stamp Program are designed to address food security and nutritional needs among senior Americans, studies demonstrate high levels of need still exist among seniors. Thus, it is important to expand our understanding of hunger among seniors in order to help develop strategies to reduce it. With the generous financial support of a grant from the Meals On Wheels Association of America Foundation (MOWAAF) to the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research (UKCPR) and Iowa State University, in this report we analyzed the causes, consequences, and future of senior hunger in America.

How to focus anti-hunger efforts not on charity but on the root causes of food insecurity, improving public health, and reducing income inequality. Food banks and food pantries have proliferated in response to an economic emergency. The loss of manufacturing jobs combined with the recession of the early 1980s and Reagan administration cutbacks in federal programs led to an explosion in the growth of food charity. This was meant to be a stopgap measure, but the jobs never came back, and the “emergency food system” became an industry. In Big Hunger, Andrew Fisher takes a critical look at the business of hunger and offers a new vision for the anti-hunger movement. From one perspective, anti-hunger leaders have been extraordinarily effective. Food charity is embedded in American civil society, and federal food programs have remained intact while other anti-poverty programs have been eliminated or slashed. But anti-hunger advocates are missing an essential element of the problem: economic inequality driven by low wages. Reliant on corporate donations of food and money, anti-hunger organizations have failed to hold business accountable for offshoring jobs, cutting benefits, exploiting workers and rural communities, and resisting wage increases. They have become part of a “hunger industrial complex” that seems as self-perpetuating as the more famous military-industrial complex. Fisher lays out a vision that encompasses a broader definition of hunger characterized by a focus on public health, economic justice, and economic democracy. He points to the work of numerous grassroots organizations that are leading the way in these fields as models for the rest of the anti-hunger sector. It is only through approaches like these that we can hope to end hunger, not just manage it.

Does a longer life mean a healthier life? The number of adults over 65 in the United States is growing, but many may not be aware that they are at greater risk from foodborne diseases and their nutritional needs change as they age. The IOM's Food Forum held a workshop October 29-30, 2009, to discuss food safety and nutrition concerns for older adults.

Reducing hunger risk among older Americans requires a concerted policy effort that is informed by rigorous research on the extent, causes, and consequences of food insecurity. In this report we provide a comprehensive portrait of the causes and consequences of food insecurity among adults age 50-59 in comparison to those in their 40s and those 60 and older. We emphasize the 50-59 age cohort in part because they do not have access to an age-specific safety net like older Americans (or some younger ones), take-up rates in food assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) are low, and the scaring effects of job loss can be more severe. We complement our age-specific analyses by examining the full samples of adults age 40 and older, those adults age 50 and older, and the subsamples with family incomes below 200% and below 300% of the poverty line.