Oregon sees drop in hungry residents.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

A new study of hunger in Oregon confirms that the state has reduced its hunger rate even as the number is rising across the country and suggests that an aggressive effort to expand food stamp participation gets the credit.

From 1999 to the end of 2004, the number of people receiving foods stamps doubled from 109,000 to 218,000, according to a new study led by Oregon State University sociology professor Mark Edwards. At the same time, hunger declined in rural areas, among employed and unemployed households, two-parent households and both renters and homeowners, the study says.

The steep rise in food stamp recipients is the likely reason Oregon's hunger rate dropped from No. 1 in the nation in the 1999-2001 period to about No. 17 now, said Patti Whitney-Wise of the Oregon Hunger Relief Task Force. That brought millions of dollars in federal food aid to the state, she said.

"We've increased our food stamp participation dramatically," Whitney-Wise said. "That represents about $200 million additional dollars a year coming into the state, and that helps."

The state's hunger rate in 2002-04, the most recent numbers available, was 3.7 percent, down from the 5.2 percent rate in 1999-2001. The decrease is relatively small, only 1.5 percentage points, but still significant, Edwards said.

"When we first did our study back in 1999-2001, the Oregon number was significantly different from the U.S. numbers, and now we are no longer out of the ordinary," he said. "Now we very much resemble the rest of the country when it comes to our (hunger) numbers."

The decrease means that roughly 19,000 households in the state no longer report facing hunger, Edwards said.

Food insecurity - uncertainty about having enough food for all members of a household - also dropped in Oregon but by a smaller amount that remains slightly higher than the national average.

The state figure dropped to 12.2 percent from 13.4 percent, while the national figure rose to 11.4 percent from 10.3 percent.

The only Oregon group showing an increase in hunger was single mothers, where the hunger rate rose slightly to 9.6 percent from 9.4 percent. Food insecurity among single mothers was a much larger problem, rising to 34.3 percent from 25 percent.

The report also for the first time compared hunger among Hispanics and non-Hispanics and found a striking disparity. Hunger among Hispanics was reported in 11.1 percent of households but only 3 percent of non-Hispanic households.

That data was not collected in the earlier study so it's not known whether the rate is rising or falling.

Landing at the top of the nation's hunger list led to the creation of the Oregon Hunger Relief Task Force, which has worked to expand outreach programs.

Part of the effort was to link food stamp and unemployment programs and simplify the process of applying for food stamps.

One measure of that effort could be in the hunger rate among unemployed Oregonians, which dropped to 6.2 percent from 11.1 percent.

But the news is not all good. Local food banks say if there's been a change in the number of people seeking food assistance, it's upward.

Joe Softich of Catholic Community Services, which operates food pantries in Eugene and Springfield, said lines still form outside the pantries each morning and the number of people receiving food has not fallen.

The Springfield food center distributed 848,000 pounds of food last year, up from about 750,000 the year before.

"We still see a lot of need," Softich said.

"We were just talking the other day about how it's still kind of hard to believe that somebody can barely wait to get out of the food room to open a can of peaches or something to eat right on the spot."

Whitney-Wise said the next step is to boost the number of family-wage jobs and cut the number of people facing food insecurity as well as hunger.

"We want to get to a point where families can provide for themselves," she said.

"And that's going to take more than just making sure that they have emergency food or food stamps.

`It means that they're making wages that are high enough to provide for their basic needs."