The Hoosier Health & Wellness Alliance, in partnership with Purdue Extension, created an Oxfam-inspired “Indiana Spotlight” hunger banquet toolkit to raise funds and awareness for food insecurity.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 12% of residents in Indiana were living in poverty. This translates to 318,815 people living on the equivalent of $72 per day or a total of $26,500 annually for a family of 4. With the pandemic intensifying those inequalities and putting progress further out of reach, the gap between the wealthy and those living in poverty grows steadily wider.
These gaps are particularly striking when looking at pandemic-related food insecurity among Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) across the state. Minority communities experience food insecurity at a 134% higher rate than their white counterparts, and that gap between food security has continually grown, now being 3 times higher than it was in 2019 prior to the pandemic.
100% of US counties have food insecurity, with an estimated 33.8 million US residents having experienced food insecurity in 2021, unable to afford healthy meals that meet all their nutrient intake requirements and help to prevent malnutrition. In 2022, an estimated 49 million residents turned to food programs. Real poverty is only eating at school, and every day, 204,290 children under age 18 in Indiana are at risk of not having enough to eat.
Rising food prices, sparse grocery store aisles, and increasing food deserts all play a role in the disruption of to access healthy and dependable meals. As reported by the USDA, their Consumer Price and Producer Price Index numbers reported the food-at-home (grocery store or supermarket food purchases) CPI increased 0.1 percent from July 2023 to August 2023 and was 3.0 percent higher than August 2022; and the food-away-from-home (restaurant purchases) CPI increased 0.3 percent in August 2023 and was 6.5 percent higher than August 2022.
From a national perspective, the following groups are more likely to live in poverty and thus risk being food insecure for some of the following reasons:
Having Children: Household expenses increase with a child, leading to less funds for other essential needs. Parents also experience greater difficulty obtaining and maintaining crucial supports, such as stable, affordable housing.
Gender Wage Gap: Women are more likely to earn less money than men, regardless of profession.
Occupational Segregation: Women are more likely to enter professions that pay less in general, e.g., K-12 education. Women are also more likely to experience domestic violence and be a single parent.
BIPOC: The racial wage gap (earning less money than other racial groups, regardless of profession or educational status); continual racially discriminatory hiring and promotion practices; and the multigenerational racial wealth gap, which limits financial support that
black and brown families can leverage.
People with a disability: Low employment rates, partially due to lack of flexibility among employers, lack of transportation, and inaccessibility in some workplaces for certain disabilities.
Education Level: Those without a high school diploma—Often ineligible for more stable and/or higher-paying jobs, especially with the decline of manufacturing and similar professions that did not require higher levels of education.
LGBTQAI+: According to a 2019 Williams Institute analysis of Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data, which is the best available evidence on poverty in the LGBTQ+ community, LGBTQ+ adults in the United States are significantly more likely to be living in poverty than their straight and cisgender counterparts. Overall, more than one in five LGBTQ+ adultss (22%) are living in poverty, compared to an estimated 16% of their straight and cisgender counterparts. Among LGBTQ+ adults, poverty further differs across sexual orientation, gender, and race. Almost three in ten transgender adults (29%), as well as almost three in ten cisgender bisexual women (29%), are living in poverty, substantially more than cisgender bisexual men (19.5%) and cisgender lesbian women (17.9%). Cisgender gay men, in contrast, are less likely to be living in poverty than straight and cisgender adults, with 12% of cisgender gay men, compared with 13% of cisgender straight men, and 18% of cisgender straight women, living in poverty.
Check out the Oxfam-inspired “Indiana Spotlight” Hunger Banquet Toolkit as a way to raise funds and awareness for food insecurity in your communities.
References:
Key Statistics & Graphics. USDA ERS – Key Statistics & Graphics. (n.d.). https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics/#insecure
Hunger in America. Feeding America. (n.d.). https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america#:~:text=In%20the%20wake%20of%20the,putting%20food%20on%20the%20table.
Marketing, U. (2023, July 5). Diving into Alice: Key findings about Alice and poverty in central Indiana. United Way of Central Indiana. https://www.uwci.org/blog/alice-data-blog-2-alice-report-key-findings#:~:text=Single%2Dparent%20households%20are%20much,men%20are%20ALICE%20and%20poverty.
Overall (all ages) hunger & poverty in Indiana: Map the meal gap. Overall (all ages) Hunger & Poverty in the United States. (n.d.). https://map.feedingamerica.org/county/2021/overall/indiana
Summary findings. USDA ERS – Summary Findings. (2023, September 25).
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings/
Exploring Poverty in Indiana
