Tag Archives: food banks

Food insecurity in the suburban land of plenty

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If the suburbs are supposedly the realization of the American Dream, why are at least a few suburban residents short on food?

Photo by Lukas on Pexels.com

Visits to suburban food pantries have surged over the past two years, exceeding previous record highs set during the pandemic.

Schaumburg Township’s pantry experienced 33.3% increase in client visits between the fiscal year that ended in February 2023 and the one that ended in February 2024, from 9,809 visits to 13,079…

The Greater Chicago Food Depository, which supplies more than 800 food pantries in Cook County, has seen similar growth in most suburban areas, Communications Director Man-Yee Lee said.

Such numbers hint at the growth of complex suburbia where more suburban residents experience poverty or have lower incomes. Schaumburg Township overall might have a relatively high household median income – $83,909 in the 2020 Census – but that obscures that there are many households with less. With higher housing costs and food prices, the need for food goes up.

I would be interested in hearing more about coordinated efforts to address food insecurity in suburbs. I am sure there are a good number of food pantries, whether provided by local government bodies, local congregations, or other groups. But, this can provide a hodge podge of opportunities that are available at different times and places. Are there regional efforts to address food issues? Is this an issue that might be reduced significantly with higher-paying jobs? Would more affordable housing make it easier to obtain food?

Jump in usage of food stamps in the Chicago suburbs

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The effects of the American economic crisis are also being felt in the suburbs. In the Chicago area, usage of food stamps has increased dramatically since 2006:

Since 2006, the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps and administered via Link cards, has seen a rise in the number of people in the program in an average month by 46 percent in Cook County, 133 percent in DuPage County, 84 percent in Lake County, 96 percent in Kane County, 168 percent in McHenry County and 74 percent in Will County.

“It’s easy to assume hunger is an urban problem,” said Lake, whose food bank serves 13 counties. “But the fact of the matter is, hunger is everywhere.”

In the suburbs, the increase in food stamps use could be the result of previously middle-income families getting caught by a tough break, said Jennifer Yonan, a vice president of the United Way of Lake County…

To qualify for food stamps, a household has to meet certain income requirements. A family of four, for example, must have a gross monthly income of less than $2,389 to qualify.

The suburbs were once considered the bastion of the wealthy but this is changing as more suburbs encounter issues that were once thought to be big city problems.

The 133% rise in DuPage County is particularly interesting. In recent decades, DuPage County was transformed from more of a bedroom county, meaning that workers lived in DuPage but commuted elsewhere for work, to a job center. In figures from the early 2000s, DuPage County had more jobs than eligible workers, meaning that the county needed outside workers to fill all of its jobs. If you look at the unemployment rate for DuPage County (not seasonally adjusted), the rate was as low as 2.7% in October 2006, as high as 9.4% in January 2010, and is now at 8.6%.

It would be interesting to see more exact data to figure who exactly has started using food stamps since 2006.

This rise in food stamp usage is a similar phenomenon to reports about the black middle class or the increase in foreclosures: when an economic crisis hits, people living on or near the economic edge will have more difficulty.

Indicators of suburban poverty at food banks

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Amidst recent news and research that more poor residents are moving to and living in the suburbs compared to previous decades and the typical image of wealthy suburban communities, use of suburban food banks may also be an indicator of these trends:

Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger-relief charity with a network of more than 200 food bank partners, says there is a growing problem with suburban poverty, “where new clients are individuals who have never needed to rely on the charitable food system.”…

At the end of the economic boom in 2007, 13 million people or about 11% of all households were considered “food insecure,” the official term used by the government to define one’s inability to access an adequate amount of nutritious food at times during the year.

“Not everyone who is food insecure is literally going hungry,” says Mark Nord, sociologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. “Some are able to head off hunger by reducing the quality and variety of their diets. But if food insecurity is severe or prolonged, it is likely to result in hunger.”…

With that has come the increase in need among groups that were historically less vulnerable to hunger, according to the USDA’s Household Food Security in the United States annual report.

It would be interesting to see more specific data about the claims this article is trying to make: just how prevalent are hunger, food insecurity, and food stamps in the suburbs versus other areas? Without this data, this article is more about hunger in America and the already widely-reported statistic about food stamp usage. Ultimately, the article is just able to hint a possibly interesting story that would shed light on the changing nature of American suburbs.

Of course, one could go look at the USDA report cited in the article. With a quick search for the word “suburb,” here is what turns up in the 2 mentions:

Food insecurity was more common in large cities than in rural areas and in suburbs and other outlying areas around large cities. (p.6)

Across the metropolitan area classifications, the prevalence of food insecurity was higher for households located in principal cities of metropolitan areas (17.2 percent), than for those in nonmetropolitan areas (14.2 percent), and in suburbs and other metropolitan areas outside principal cities (13.2 percent).  Regionally, the prevalence of food insecurity was highest in the South (15.9 percent) and West (15.5 percent), intermediate in the Midwest (13.9 percent), and lowest in the Northeast (12.2 percent). (p.17)

Here are the figures about food pantry use:

Use of food pantries was higher in principal cities of metropolitan areas (5.0 percent) and in nonmetropolitan areas (5.9 percent) than in metropolitan areas outside of central cities (3.9 percent). The percentage of households that used food pantries was higher in the Midwest and West than in the  Northeast and South. (p.43)

It would be helpful to have comparisons to past data to see whether these figure for the suburbs has risen over the years. And while the percentages are lower for the suburbs, since more Americans live in the suburbs, there are probably larger absolute numbers of people dealing with food insecurity in the suburbs. (Quick calculations with a rough population estimate of 300 million: since at least 50% of Americans live in suburbs vs. 30% in cities, the food insecurity figures would translate into roughly 15.5 million in the cities and 19.8 million in the suburbs).