Summary: Sweet Charity? (Ch. 2-3)

In these two chapters, Janet Poppendieck discusses the issues around the emergency food. In chapter two, she focuses on the issue of “who uses the emergency food program”. According to Poppendieck (1998), “the answer to our question is almost too simple for words. Who eats emergency food? Poor people, and people very much like them” (p. 51). These “poor people” are further divided into four categories: 1) some people are poor because employment-related factors, including recent unemployment, long-term unemployment, and seasonal unemployment. 2) Some people are poor because of the high shelter costs and “once a person becomes homeless, he or she almost automatically joins the ranks of the hungry” (Poppendieck 1998, p. 63). 3) Some people are poor because of the inadequate public assistance, including the inadequate government welfare programs. 4) Some people are poor and they do not have access to food stamps. These people include those wrongly denied stamps, those who are in need but not technically eligible, and those who are receiving stamps but cannot make ends meet. In chapter 3, Poppendieck focuses on the issues of “how did the emergency food program rise” and the “social constructionists’ perspective on hungry”. According the Poppendieck, the emergency food programs rose in the early 1980s, primarily as a response to both the economic recession and the “long, slow erosion of public assistance benefits … overshadowed by a major assault on domestic social spending [by the Reagan administration]” (Poppendieck 1998, p. 82). She also says that according to social constructionists, hunger is actually a label used to describe the problem of poverty. “Hunger” is preferred as the label because people in poverty are likely to experience hunger prior to other consequences like homeless.

Personal Response:
In the DSOC 1101 class that I’m taking, we also talked about the issue of poverty, especially the inner city poverty of African American people. The conclusion from that class is also that the poverty is mostly resulted from the social structure, and only social structural reforms could essentially solve the problem. Another issue addressed in that class is that American people tend to blame the inner city poverty on the poor themselves. (E.g. in a survey, people listed the poor people’s laziness as the primary source of their poverty.) The generally public’s inability of realizing the social structure as the ultimate cause of poverty is a big obstacle for effective governmental welfare programs to be implemented.

Questions to consider:
In the book, the economic recession and the assault on domestic social spending by Reagan administration are listed as two primary causes of poverty. My questions are:
1) Was the problem of poverty alleviated by the Clinton administration (with the economic prosperity)?
2) Will the Obama administration, dominated by the Democratic Party, further alleviate poverty issues?