BACKGROUND:The literature on the determinants of US food insecurity is extensive. Yet, the research on transitions in food insecurity among a group, especially those at risk of food insecurity-recipients of charitable food assistance-is more limited. OBJECTIVES:This study examines changes in financial well-being and health-related quality of life as correlates of transitions in food insecurity status among recipients of charitable food assistance. DESIGN:Survey data were collected 6 months apart during 2022 and 2023. Food insecurity was measured at both time points using the 18-item US Department of Agriculture Food Security Survey Module. At both time points, recipients reported on their financial well-being using a 10-item scale and their health-related quality of life using 3 measures: global health and the number of physical and mental unhealthy days. Other time-varying and time-invariant variables are also included. PARTICIPANTS:Recipients of charitable food assistance (n = 777) were recruited and surveyed from 10 food pantries in Atlanta, GA, and 10 food pantries in Houston, TX. Participants were followed up 6 months later. The sample is composed of those who participated in both surveys. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:Marginal food insecurity, food insecurity, and very low food security. STATISTICAL ANALYSES PERFORMED:Standard descriptive statistics are displayed along with results from 2-way fixed effects models. RESULTS:Over a 6-month period, 21.5% of respondents saw a change in marginal food insecurity, 24.1% in food insecurity, and 14.0% in very low food security. These changes were associated with changes in the number of days the respondent reported having trouble with mental health during the past 30 days and perceptions of financial well-being. CONCLUSIONS:These results demonstrate that practitioners, such as nutrition and dietetics practitioners, should be aware that food insecurity status among a group at high risk of food insecurity frequently changes over a short period. These changes were associated with factors potentially trackable by nutrition and dietetics practitioners in community settings, which may facilitate the distribution of appropriate resources more quickly.

This article documents how an MSW student in an introductory community practice course took her class assignment and over the course of two years revitalized, democratized, and transformed a sclerotic, corporate-run Home Owners Association (HOA). While the community analysis assignment required the student to interview six of her neighbors, the resulting increase in social capital in the neighborhood led, over the next two years, to the student being elected President of the HOA and organizing the community to win streetlights, clean up a polluted retention pond, create positive relations with city officials, and increase the social capital and collective efficacy of the neighborhood.

Prior research has focused on various social determinants of health as risk factors to food insecurity. Less work has focused on modifiable behaviors. This study examined the relationship between grocery shopping and meal preparation self-efficacy and food insecurity among food pantry clients. Surveys were used to collect the data from 10 food pantries in Atlanta, Georgia and 10 food pantries in Houston, Texas in 2022. Food insecurity status was ascertained by 3 affirmative responses on the 18-item USDA Food Security Scale Module. A total score of affirmative responses to 6-items each on a 1= not all confident to 4 = very confident scale was used to measure grocery shopping and meal preparation self-efficacy. Covariate-adjusted logistic regression models were conducted to examine the relationship between grocery shopping and meal preparation self-efficacy and food insecurity among the full sample. Standard errors in all regression models were corrected to account for multiple observations within a pantry. On average, participants (N=1,219) were 56 years old and had a grocery shopping and meal preparation self-efficacy total score of 20.73 (SD=3.35) out of 24.00. Over half of the sample experienced food insecurity (57%). For each unit increase in grocery shopping and meal preparation self-efficacy, food pantry clients experienced 7% lower odds of experiencing food insecurity (95% CI: 0.89-0.97). The findings hold when the models were stratified by sex. The results suggest interventions to improve grocery shopping and meal preparation self-efficacy may help reduce food insecurity.

Food insecurity is an indicator of well-being in the United States. A high proportion of recipients of charitable food assistance (CFA) are women and are often in charge of specific household managerial responsibilities (e.g., childcare, transportation). Consequently, they frequently face choices between paying for food and paying for other basic need(s). This study aims to examine which hunger-coping economic tradeoffs place females with at least one dependent child in the house and females without a dependent child in the house at risk for experiencing food insecurity. Data was collected at 10 Houston-area and 10-Atlanta-area food pantries in 2022 (N = 883). Using USDA cutoff criteria, households were considered food insecure based on ≥3 affirmative responses to the 18-item Food Security Scale Module. Hunger-coping economic tradeoff experiences were based on affirmative responses to whether anyone in the household ever had to choose between food and six basic needs (i.e. childcare, medicine/medical care, utilities, rent/mortgage, transportation, education). Covariate-adjusted logistic regression models were conducted to understand the relationship between six hunger-coping economic tradeoffs and food insecurity for the entire analytic sample and stratified by whether the female participant had a child in house. Standard errors in all regression models were corrected to account for multiple observations within a pantry. Adults, on average, were 55 years old (58% food insecure; 47% Hispanic; 42% black). Four hunger-coping economic tradeoffs were related to experiencing food insecurity. Economic tradeoffs between food and a) medicine/medical care and b) transportation elevated the likelihood of food insecurity, regardless of child status. Tradeoffs between food and childcare increased the risk for experiencing food insecurity among females with a dependent child. Deciding to pay between food and utilities was related to food insecurity experiences among females without a dependent child. Increases in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and eligibility along with programs to enhance resources related to medical care, transportation, childcare and utilities could help reduce food insecurity, especially among CFA recipients.

This exploratory study measured the types and amounts of debt experienced by families in Georgia that exited Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) between 2009 and 2015. The research employed a cross-sectional, descriptive, survey research design. A sample of 87 participants was interviewed individually and self-reported their levels of consumer debt. The median level of debt across the entire sample was $7,000. The largest category of debt was student loan debt; 51% of the sample owed an average of $23,276 (median $12,771) in student loan debt. The next most frequent forms of debt were medical (median $2,000), credit card (median $950), and utility (median $261). Considering only 41% of respondents were employed full-time in the formal economy earning an average hourly wage of $12.18, this level of consumer debt suggests a majority of this sample of TANF leavers is debt stressed. These findings highlight the importance of future studies with larger samples exploring the various impacts of debt on low-income families.

Abstract If one of the goals of macro social work in the United States is to decrease poverty and inequality, by most measures it has largely failed that mission over the past 40 years. After briefly documenting the four-decade rise in inequality and extreme poverty in the United States, three organizing campaigns are highlighted—living wage, Fight for $15, and strikes by public school educators—that fought hard to reverse such trends. A strategy, “bargaining for the common good,” which was implemented across those campaigns, is analyzed as a key ingredient to their success.

Since 1996 the U.S. government has stated the primary purpose of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is to help needy families achieve self-sufficiency. Twenty years after welfare reform this cross-sectional, survey study tests this proposition with a sample of 60 former TANF recipients in Georgia. Applying three different operational definitions of economic self-sufficiency (ESS), between 4% and 17% of respondents were self-sufficient. Implications include advancing the methodology, operationalization, and debate around ESS in addition to questioning the fundamental premise of welfare reform: that simply working in the current economy lifts most TANF leavers from poverty to ESS.

Helping Homeless Veterans Find Employment and Pay Child Support: A Program Evaluation of a Pilot Collaboration Fred Brooks, Robin Hartinger-Saunders, RorieScurlock Abstract Objective: This research evaluates the effectiveness of a pilot collaboration in Georgia (USA) designed to help homeless veterans, with open child support cases,locate employment, find permanent housing, resolve legal issues, and begin making child support payments. Method: The study employed a single group pretest posttest research design (n= 45). Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from all 45 participants enrolled in the study. Results: Between baseline and posttest,mean monthly child support payments increased 47% ($55 to $81). While child support payments improved, they remained well below the $396 mean monthly amount owed. Sixty-nine percent of the sample remained unemployed at posttest and presented with major barriers to employment. Half of focus group respondents reported improved housing conditions over the course of the study. While a few veterans reported progress on resolving legal issues, the majority had extant legal issues at the end of the study. Conclusions: While a majority of focus group participants felt their lives had improved, stronger interventions tailored to help participants overcome multiple, complex barriers to employment will be necessary to help homeless veterans secure living wage employment and make substantial child support payments. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jssw.v2n2a14

After 38 years of longevity (1970 to 2008), including huge growth over its last decade, in 2008 and 2009 the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was rocked by an embezzlement scandal and two controversies and declined precipitously. By the spring of 2010, all city and statewide ACORN operations had either disaffiliated from the national organization or collapsed altogether, and in November 2010 ACORN filed for bankruptcy. Because ACORN was widely considered the nation's largest and most powerful group organizing the poor, the organization's breathtakingly swift destruction warrants analysis. This commentary analyzes one hypothesis that might have contributed to ACORN's vulnerability to smear campaigns: the organization's long-time practice of combining direct action organizing with individual service provision. In early 2008, by most empirical measures of organizing strength, ACORN appeared to be a strong and powerful community organization. Over the preceding 10 years, ACORN had been instrumental in numerous campaigns and victories on a wide range of issues such as winning living wage ordinances (Luce, 2009), increasing the minimum wage (Atlas & Dreier, 2006), fighting predatory lending practices of major financial institutions (Hurd, Donner, & Phillips, 2004), winning a guarantee of affordable housing in the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards mega-development (Atlas, 2009) among dozens of other neighborhood, statewide and national victories. ACORN Housing was helping over 6,000 moderate-income families per year purchase their first homes. In 2008 ACORN Service Centers filed income taxes at no charge for over 50,000 people, resulting in over $65 million dollars in Earned Income Tax Credit/Child Tax Credit returns to low-income families (Rathke, 2009). ACORN was considered the only community organization in the United States that had the ability to coordinate campaigns from the neighborhood to cities and states, all the way up to national policies and corporate campaigns (Dreier, 2009). An independent study by Ranghelli (2006) of the National Center for Responsible Philanthropy, using conservative assumptions, estimated that ACORN campaign victories and services over the 10-year period between 1995 and 2004 resulted in over $15 billion of direct economic development for low- and moderate-income families. According to ACORN's former Chief Organizer Wade Rathke (2009), by 2005 ACORN's combined operations (organizing, housing and tax preparation services, research, and voter registration) employed over 1,000 people, in 85 offices; serviced 400,000 dues-paying members; and raised and spent around $100 million dollars a year.

Objective: A total of 6 years after displacement by a Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) project, this research examines residents who returned to the redeveloped community and residents who decided to keep their vouchers and were living in private sector housing. Respondents were compared on the following variables: application process and decision to move back, satisfaction with housing, material hardships, and perception of economic well-being. Method: The study employed a static group comparison research design. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 56 respondents through five focus groups. Results: Residents who moved back to the revitalized public housing were highly satisfied with their housing, had significantly fewer material hardships, and perceived their economic well-being more positively compared to residents remaining in the voucher program. Conclusions: Our results both support and expand upon previous empirical findings on the complex comparisons between voucher users and revitalized public-housing residents.

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 has probably received more media attention in the past 2 years than it garnered cumulatively over the previous 30 years. Numerous conservative pundits and commentators have blamed the CRA for the subprime crisis and the subsequent worldwide financial meltdown. Most social workers are probably unaware that the CRA is probably responsible for more investment, loans, and wealth creation in low and moderate income neighborhoods than any other single piece of federal legislation over the past 40 years. This article highlights the following features about the CRA that social workers need to know: The CRA was created and passed only because of grassroots community organizing; the CRA has been directly or indirectly related to 8 trillion dollars of investments, mortgage, and small business loans in low income neighborhoods since 1977; community organizing has always been the primary enforcement mechanism of the CRA; contrary to widespread right-wing media accounts, the CRA was not responsible for the housing bubble and worldwide financial crisis in 2008. In this article, we articulate the veridical factors contributing to the financial collapse. Presently, Congress is debating reforms for the financial sector, and the way banking functions will be transacted in the future remains unclear. Regardless of the eventual restructuring of finance, moving forward, social workers should continue to advocate for legislation that will ensure housing for low and moderate income people.

In the last two decades, the income and security of the individual middle class worker has declined and the gap between the middle class and the wealthy has widened.We explain how this is bad for democracy, the economy, and the aggregate health of the nation.We examine the governmental policies and interventions that increased the middle class following the depression and maintained its vigor through the post-World War II period.The impetus for these changes in governmental policies in the 1930s was to end the Great Depression.We pose the question of whether a nation can recover from a depression without invigorating the middle class.We conclude that in order to recover from the current economic and financial crisis, the middle class must be strengthened.

In the last two decades, the income and security of the individual middle class worker has declined, and the gap between the rich and the poor has widened. In contrast to the last twenty years and the "gilded age" that preceded it, from the time of the first New Deal through the 1970s, the middle class prospered. Wealth and income were more equitably shared in America. This article examines policies that strengthened the middle class during the New Deal, during World War II, and after World War II. These policies strengthened the bargaining power of labor. This article offers suggestions for reviving the middle class now with particular focus on empowering labor.

In the last two decades, the income and security of the individual middle class worker has declined, and the gap between the rich and the poor has widened. In contrast to the last twenty years and the “gilded age” that preceded it, from the time of the first New Deal through the 1970s, the middle class prospered. Wealth and income were more equitably shared in America. This article examines policies that strengthened the middle class during the New Deal, during World War II, and after World War II. These policies strengthened the bargaining power of labor. This article offers suggestions for reviving the middle class now with particular focus on empowering labor.