'Hungry' means 'poor'.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Hold those hungry horses - Oregon may not be the hungriest state in the nation after all. The Oregonian newspaper reviewed hunger statistics and found that the shameful distinction as the "hungriest state," which Oregon first earned in 1999, may be undeserved.

Hunger statistics, the newspaper reported, have substantial margins of error that make comparisons among states questionable. The ranking is also clouded by the way government studies define hunger, which many Americans associate with images of distended bellies and shrunken faces from famine-stricken regions of the world.

In America, hunger is more a matter of economics than nutrition. The U.S. Department of Agriculture classifies Americans as hungry when they report having cut back, skipped meals or gone a day without eating because they didn't have money to buy food. That happens at least once a year in three-fourths of U.S. households counted as hungry.

Oregon first earned the ``hungriest state'' badge of shame four years ago when a USDA study identified the state as having the nation's highest percentage of households with one or more members who went hungry at least once in the previous year. Three subsequent studies using a similar formula also put Oregon on top of the hunger heap.

Now, Matt Nord, author of the USDA study, says Oregon probably ranks not No. 1, but among the top four or five states. The reason: hefty sampling errors in the surveys. Nord's qualifications make sense. Many Oregonians, including the editors of this newspaper, were puzzled by the No. 1 hunger rankings, given that the state's poverty levels, while no source of pride, hover in the middle of the national pack.

Ultimately, it really shouldn't matter whether Oregon ranks No. 1 or No. 3 or, let's be generous, No. 6 in hunger. Thousands of Oregonians don't have enough money for food.

Or, more precisely, they don't always have enough money left over for food after paying for housing, utilities, transportation, medical care and other expenses. Food is a relatively minor item in most household budgets, but unlike many others, it's subject to some degree of control. In Oregon's economy, with scarce jobs, low wages and high housing costs, some households' budgets are so tight that people find themselves skipping or delaying food purchases and end up being counted as hungry.

That's the face of hunger in America, and in Oregon. Few of the state's hungry people are living in absolute privation. Instead, they're living so close to the edge that food becomes their budgetary shock absorber. Such conditions are a call to action - feeding the hungry is the most fundamental of human responsibilities - but hunger won't disappear as long as the economic pressures that create it persist.

Meanwhile, Oregon's No. 1 ranking, deserved or not, has had positive effects. It has prompted Gov. Ted Kulongoski to declare hunger a top priority. A high-level focus on the undeniable reality of hunger in our midst is welcome - particularly if it recognizes hunger as simply one of the more shameful masks presented by the deeper problem of poverty.