Penny Wise? Pound Foolish? The economic cost of domestic hunger
Commentary by Rev. Kenneth C. Horne
Executive Director, Society of St. Andrew
national nonprofit hunger-relief ministry and UMC Advance #801600
BIG ISLAND, VA – There’s a very old expression I want to introduce to you. My father (I respectfully referred to him as “my old man”) used to caution me against what he called being “penny wise and pound foolish”. The basic idea is that refusing to spend enough now to fix a problem properly can wind up costing you much more later. Being penny wise and pound foolish can hurt your personal finances. It can do much worse than that on a national scale. Where our treatment of the hungry is concerned we seem to have a terminal case of “penny wisdom and pound foolishness”.
A recent study has calculated the cost of tolerating hunger in the United States. The study* was commissioned by the Sodexho Corporation and conducted by an old friend of mine, Dr. J. Larry Brown of the Harvard School of Public Health. Larry put together a team of researchers from Harvard, Brandeis and Loyola Universities and conducted a thorough study of the consequences of tolerating serious hunger among 35 million of our fellow citizens. The results of this study are startling.
People who don’t get enough to eat turn to food stamps, and when that’s not enough (and it isn’t) they go to emergency food charities. These charities (like the Society of St. Andrew) provide food to fill the need that food stamps don’t cover. These charities depend on the generosity of donors to keep them functioning. That bill is $14.4 billion a year!
People who don’t get enough to eat get sick more than the rest of us, and, because they can’t go to the doctor like we can, they get much sicker before they get any treatment. They get that treatment in our hospital emergency rooms, where it is most expensive. Their expenses get passed on to the rest of us through higher insurance premiums, which contribute to the rising cost of health care generally. That bill is $66.8 billion a year!
People who don’t get enough to eat drop out of school more than the rest of us, and those that stay in school don’t learn as fast or as well as the rest of us. Because of this they aren’t as productive in their working lives as the rest of us. The lost productivity bill is $9.2 billion a year! Now, I think that number is too low, but I have learned not to argue with Larry, he’s almost always right.
The total annual cost of tolerating hunger in this country is over $90 billion! This becomes even more shocking when you consider that virtually every authority in the field maintains that an additional $10 billion investment in present government feeding programs (food stamps, WIC, etc.) would totally eliminate hunger in this country.
So let’s see………. Refuse to spend $10 billion to fix the problem that’s costing you $90 billion? You would have to be penny wise and pound foolish to make that decision. Yet our “leaders” do that every year, and think they’re saving us money! You’d think we could elect people at least as smart as my old man. Well, maybe next time.
* www.helpstophunger.org/pdfs/Economic_Cost_of_Domestic_Hunger.pdf
A recent study has calculated the cost of tolerating hunger in the United States. The study* was commissioned by the Sodexho Corporation and conducted by an old friend of mine, Dr. J. Larry Brown of the Harvard School of Public Health. Larry put together a team of researchers from Harvard, Brandeis and Loyola Universities and conducted a thorough study of the consequences of tolerating serious hunger among 35 million of our fellow citizens. The results of this study are startling.
People who don’t get enough to eat turn to food stamps, and when that’s not enough (and it isn’t) they go to emergency food charities. These charities (like the Society of St. Andrew) provide food to fill the need that food stamps don’t cover. These charities depend on the generosity of donors to keep them functioning. That bill is $14.4 billion a year!
People who don’t get enough to eat get sick more than the rest of us, and, because they can’t go to the doctor like we can, they get much sicker before they get any treatment. They get that treatment in our hospital emergency rooms, where it is most expensive. Their expenses get passed on to the rest of us through higher insurance premiums, which contribute to the rising cost of health care generally. That bill is $66.8 billion a year!
People who don’t get enough to eat drop out of school more than the rest of us, and those that stay in school don’t learn as fast or as well as the rest of us. Because of this they aren’t as productive in their working lives as the rest of us. The lost productivity bill is $9.2 billion a year! Now, I think that number is too low, but I have learned not to argue with Larry, he’s almost always right.
The total annual cost of tolerating hunger in this country is over $90 billion! This becomes even more shocking when you consider that virtually every authority in the field maintains that an additional $10 billion investment in present government feeding programs (food stamps, WIC, etc.) would totally eliminate hunger in this country.
So let’s see………. Refuse to spend $10 billion to fix the problem that’s costing you $90 billion? You would have to be penny wise and pound foolish to make that decision. Yet our “leaders” do that every year, and think they’re saving us money! You’d think we could elect people at least as smart as my old man. Well, maybe next time.
* www.helpstophunger.org/pdfs/Economic_Cost_of_Domestic_Hunger.pdf
Ken Horne is co-founder and Executive Director of the Society of St. Andrew, a national nonprofit hunger-relief ministry based in Big Island, Virginia. The Society gleans (saves) fresh produce that will otherwise go to waste and donates it to the hungry nationwide. It has national and regional offices in four states and gleaning offices in 22 states. Each year, with the help of as many as 40,000 volunteers, the Society of St. Andrew saves 30-40 million pounds of fresh, nutritious produce from farm fields and orchards, providing 90-120 million servings of nutritious food to hungry Americans at a cost of less than two cents per serving.
posted by TN Conference UMC @ 7:26 AM
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