Household Pulse Survey Results
Based on responses collected September 16-28, the #HouseholdPulseSurvey estimates that 24.0% of American adults expect someone in their household to experience a loss in employment income in the next 4 weeks. https://t.co/GRo2WSpDD5 #Census #COVID19 #Income_Loss
— U.S. Census Bureau (@uscensusbureau) October 7, 2020
Data is spread out over many Excel Tables. You can find the tables here: Week 15 Household Pulse Survey: September 16 – September 28
Household Pulse Survey Twitter Thread
- Loss of Income: Based on responses collected September 16-28, the HouseholdPulseSurvey estimates that 24.0% of American adults expect someone in their household to experience a loss in employment income in the next 4 weeks.
- Telework: The HouseholdPulseSurvey estimates that 36.6% of adults live in households where at least one adult substituted some or all in-person work for telework because of the coronavirus pandemic.
- Enough to Eat: The HouseholdPulseSurvey estimates that 10.1% of American adults lived in households where there was either sometimes or often not enough to eat in the previous 7 days.
- Rent: The HouseholdPulseSurvey estimates that 6.8% of adults are either not current on their rent or mortgage payment, or have slight or no confidence in making their next payment on time.
- Eviction: The HouseholdPulseSurvey estimates that of adults living in households not current on rent or mortgage, 32.1% report #eviction or #foreclosure in the next two months is either somewhat or very likely.
- Meeting Expenses: The HouseholdPulseSurvey estimates that 31.9% of adults live in households where it has been somewhat or very difficult to pay usual household expenses during the coronavirus pandemic.
- Cancelled Plans: The HouseholdPulseSurvey estimates that 81.7% of adults in households with post-secondary educational plans had those plans cancelled or changed significantly this fall.
Food Sufficiency Notes
- Total 249.2 Million
- 134.2 Million had enough food of the right type
- 63.8 Million people had enough food, not necessarily the right type
- 17.3 Million sometimes did not have enough to eat
- 4.9 Million often did not have enough to eat
- 29.0 Million did not report
Not Enough to Eat = (17.3 + 4.9) / (249.2 – 29.0) = 10.1%
Mish
“If people are still hungry, it is probably one of two things, either pride, or lack of knowledge about what is available. I suspect it is mostly the latter. “
Was on Coast-to-Coast tonight nd credited a reader for those obeservations.
Agree. I am not hurting but I’ve been giving money to food banks. I’m told it is a V-shaped recovery however by TPTB.
People hungry? Uh huh. Have you looked at the average waist size in America? You must be kidding. This nation has to be the fattest and most out of shape on the entire planet. Please, the health care crisis in America is because of all the weak and over weight people….nothing a good famine won’t cure.
Mish, please add another column to the table for BMI. Thanks!
Thanks for the reminder, Mish. I’ll be making a trip to the food bank tomorrow, and take them a contribution. My business may be down, but I have plenty to eat, and the ability to help others who are less fortunate.
Excuse me Mish, I don t fckn believe this one ! People in the fckn US(not the fckn Horn of Africa), where millions of tons of food are being destroyed annually because there s just too much of it ? Nobody in Europe is hungry, with or without money, and if I were, for example, I d just go out and steal it, I might spent a couple of hours in the police station and that s it ! What kind of a country has the US become, if this is true, but I hope and don’t think it is, one can prove ANYTHING with fckn statistics, especially with political motives, that much is obvious !
We have plenty of assistance here, too. The poor are eligible for food stamps (actually a card now). There are local food banks, and food giveaways. There is a food giveaway across the street from my business every Saturday morning, and the lines are long. I just realized what it was this week. Then there are the churches, which also have food assistance.
If people are still hungry, it is probably one of two things, either pride, or lack of knowledge about what is available. I suspect it is mostly the latter. Some of the people who are hungry may not have familiarity with the programs that exist to help them, as they may never have had this need before.
You have some delusions of grandeur in Brussels of what America actually is. Here we have a party that blames individuals for their lot in life and doesn’t worry about wearing a mask during a pandemic.
….we DO wear masks here, yet in just a matter of weeks, cases have been increasing exponentially…..Trump to blame too?
“……..due to Covid.”
Certainly is not a consequence of locking down the economy.
Mish, the study and the conclusions do not match.
I am a professional welfare provider. The above Census stats are accurate, but the conclusions being made are not at all accurate.
Here’s how “10% not having enough food” doesn’t=actual hungry people:
In my 10 years working and housing low income, I’ve never met a person who had insufficient food. If it was really 10% of the US population, you’d think I’d have met one by now, but I haven’t.
In short, don’t make a conclusion that people are starving out there. That’s impossible and it does not happen in the USA except in isolated cases of deliberate deprivation of food by parents to kids.
Well if you are 30+ pounds overweight (as so many of the complainers seem to be on the news) and used to stuffing your fat face anytime you pleased, then not being able to do so might constitute having insufficient food. [lol]
Sure professional welfare provider.. I will a
dd if all else fails remember theft is not prosecuted if under $950 and the police aren’t going to come running for misdemeanor theft in progress
Did you know that 30% of SNAP benefits go to just ten states? You must know that the individual states administer the program if you work in social services….those ten I mentioned do it by county…but the rest by state.
I don’t mean to be insulting, but your personal experience is not the big picture on this. Just because a supplemental food assistance program exists does not mean that all citizens of all states can automatically get fed by it…..or that it is as easy to get approved for SNAP benefits everywhere….as it might be in your state or county.
30% to 10 states.
Is that the same as saying “state populations fall on an 80/20-rule distribution”?
Not to refute your point about one person’s experience not being necessarily representative of all experience. But let’s wait for someone in the biz to provide a counter-example. At 10%, such an example should be easy to come by.
That stat is worthless if not adjusted for population. Of course 30% of all food stamps go to just 10 states. those 10 states have 30% of the population. Duh.
And yes, it’s allocated by states, but funded federally. A federal, universal formula is applied based on local cost of living, making the whole “it’s expensive in certain areas” argument null and void.
I assure you, if a person wants food stamps and is having difficulty getting enough food, the local DSS will not let them go hungry. It’s sufficient unless you waste them on steaks early in the month.
The local food stamp allottment is 2x what I spend on my family, so it’s generous.
There is a huge difference between starving and missing a meal once or twice a week.
I suspect Carl nailed it : Pride or lack of understanding of resources
My own view is that the capitalist model will increasingly fail to address the jobs shortfall (both quantity and quality), resulting in disaffected voters. There are lots of meaningful and important jobs from a societal standpoint that are not “economic” from a capitalist standpoint. For example research from a purely scientific standpoint, ecological restoration work, paid volunteering, infrastructure development, arts, etc. Create a job guarantee and grant program to help ensure people have access to meaningful and productive work alternatives. Currently there is a vast under utilization of work capacity, which is a huge failing of capitalism. I am not anti capitalist, I just think it needs to be supplemented correctly to address its shortcomings.
I also zero-growth policies.
10 million or so homeless, starving people in America won’t be a problem at all. They wont riot, or loot, or steal… they’ll just quietly wander off and die in the woods, where the beasts of the field shall feast upon their emaciated corpses, as foretold by Supply Side Jesus.
Remember many states don’t even prosecute theft if under $950 now. Again it seems like more of a problem of priorities or not budgeting for essentials. I mean everyone seems to have the latest iPhone and sleeve tattoos.
these poor college students who likely don’t work full time are all wearing $1000 Canada Goose coats here in the Boston/Cambridge area
WTH is a Canada Goose coat…{looking up online}
…These look the same as every other brand’s “puffy” crap. What could possibly make this worth $1000? The little patch sewed on the side?
That patch lets everyone know you paid $1000, and that’s the only important thing.
There are too many people and not enough jobs. Robots and automation are going to continue to reduce the jobs available to people. People need to be popping out less children, especially if they don’t have strong job prospects.
Otherwise, they stand a good chance of spending their lives in homeless camps with not enough to eat.
I think you make a great point. However, saying people ‘need to be popping out less children’ doesn’t really constitute a solution. Perhaps making permanent sterilization a requirement for receiving welfare longer than a few years would solve the problem. Damn! I sound like Margaret Sanger.
I am 100% for mandatory birth control for anyone who receives welfare. What gives a person the right to breed if they are unable to support a new life and rely on welfare to survive. Of course it is completely reversible, but NO kids on my dime. I struggle to support my kids as is, but I do not ask for help
Tell that to religious conservatives who would deny a female who got pregnant accidentally the right to terminate her pregnancy. Then there are the Holy Rollers who take the Book of Genesis quite literally when it comes to having children: Be fruitful and multiply.
Oh, and what about the kids???
Of course the
‘poor children’ a’singlmother’ lines will be used again both are entirely ones choice in life
Now if about 80% more could eat less then America would be healthier.
If in the richest and most powerful country in the world, 10%+ of the population do not have enough to eat, and more people cannot meet their basic needs, then something is seriously dis-functioning: that means the wealth is concentrated in a small group of people. All the boasting like Democracy, Beacon Tower of the world, Chosen by God, etc. are just laughable boasting.
Wealth has always been concentrated in the hands of a relatively few throughout the whole of human history. Nothing is different now and nothing about this is going to change in the future, regardless of who becomes president.
It doesn’t have to be so extreme. If it continues it will cause rebellion.
Rebellion? Sure thing. Just like in NK, China and many other countries where there isn’t enough food and the wealthy dominate.
There have been lots of revolutions in the past, but hey, maybe Americans would put up with being suppressed by the few.
It will take a long time for the USA to get to the level that caused the above 3 revolutions. And realistically, rebellion isn’t really possible any longer anyway when the state has so much military might at its disposal.
Oooooor. 10%…hungry could be wrong.
1st thought when you see a headline like that of this Mish posting: What was the question that generated the numbers?
Observation: Hungry people in the US are the rich. They are thinner.
One of the more sleazy aspects of American politics in my memory…is/was the way the most opportunistic of conservative politicians…the very same ones who had NOTHING good to say about Trump until he won the nomination, and more especially after he was elected…..forgot all about their DEEP reservations about Trump’s qualifications and character and everything else…..and absolutely rushed in to kiss his ring.
Pompeo, Graham, De Santis, Christie, Giuliani…on and on.
As soon as they had something to gain they ate their words and lined up to hitch their wagons to Trump.
There aren’t enough actual morals, ethics and principles in that whole group to fill a teacup.
Now it’s gonna bite some of them on the ass. It’s a little late now to disavow Trump. Good luck with that.
Maybe this will wake Americans up from this drunken government need of them to rack up trillions in consumer debt to keep the economy going. This “got to have it now” conditioning has left America in a needy state where few save for a rainy day.
No it won’t. Don’t just blame the drunken government. Blame millions of consumers who are in a drunken stupor when it comes to making good financial decisions. When the rent and mortgage moratoriums end, there will be a lot of people who will lose their leased cars, default on their credit cards and maybe end up homeless.
This is bullshit. No one in America goes hungry unless they are mentally deficient or are making really bad choices. There are more food banks giving away free food to people who do not need it than you can count. Seeing people in new SUV’s talking on their cell phones while sitting in a line for free food is disgusting and shows what a pathetic unethical society we have become. I am ashamed to be an American.
An people insist the US allow existing illegal aliens and encourage unskilled people to immigrate to the US.
Rapid response by the government in the spring, which surprised me at the time, prevented this from happening months ago. Now whatever economic honeymoon bailouts might have produced is about over.
It’s a damn shame we have people going to bed hungry in a country with this much abundance. Failure to deal with the real needs of the people near the bottom of the financial pyramid can bring down the whole system, if allowed to go on unchecked.
Sure we have a few people beyond help of any charity or any program prepared to take care of hunger….but when ordinary working people can’t pay for rent and groceries, we’re not doing things right. I’m not talking about addicts and chronic homelessness. I’m talking about people who were working hard and barely hanging on…who aren’t able to do that right now.
Unfortunately pain is the only way to learn in life. I feel empathy for the less fortunate people but I have made sacrifices to get to have the stability I have desired.
A painful childhood is how we end up with a strong generation of kids. The mistakes of their parents will be corrected. My grandfather was born in 1919 and grew up right in the middle of the Great Depression and in the middle of the dust bowl. This made him a very strong independent person.
I don’t have a solution to the problem we are facing but it’s a sharp double edged sword. Give to much and risk a dependent generation. Give to little and risk plight and misery of the current generation.
My bootstrap story is about as good as anybody’s. I’d be happy to compare notes.
My father grew up so poor in the Great Depression his family hardly noticed the bust cycle …but then they grew most of their own food and as farmers, lived on local credit, and literally paid their bills once a year, when their cotton was harvested. No shit. It was a very different world.
After WWII, life was so much better for my parents, even though they were working class, they had a great life and I never once went to bed hungry. My parents never went to college, but they worshipped education and believed in it…as a path to a better life…and that was their big influence on me.
I busted my ass to get through 13 years of higher ed….paid for mostly by me….. and got more training, and I live a lifestyle beyond anything they ever thought about. I have so much to be grateful for…and I am grateful..
I also raised four kids (well, my wife did, with my help). They never had it rough, but they turned out fine. My view is that they did well because I taught them one thing…..that they were primarily responsible for their own outcomes in life…not me, not anybody else….but them. That was my big influence on my kids.
All four have masters degrees. All are doing fine, even in the present circumstances…..but in places like NYC, (where one of them lives, btw)….it’s damned hard to find work right now. Believe that.
So many kids now don’t experience having a real father..or have any decent mentors…or anybody to help them figure out anything. A whole lot of minority kids can’t read….and they grow up to be functionally illiterate. I don’t blame the schools for that. It’s cultural, and it’s a disturbing trend. Nobody in higher education or social science…..in this age of affirming POC status and being politically correct…..wants to own that.
But in an age of digital technology and coding and so forth, how is somebody like that ever going to do anything more productive than flipping hamburgers or pushing a broom? Sell drugs? Why wouldn’t they?
We have way too many people who have never learned much that will help them make a living in the world they were born into.
And it’s way harder to break out of poverty now than it was when I was kid, So I see people..like some of my employees…who just struggle, always, just to cover the basics. That’s all some of them aspire to…..
But when we have people who sincerely wish to work, are willing to show up and do their best for an employer, and willing to work for…..just a bare minimum living wage…..and those people just can’t make it anymore….in my view, the country is in trouble.
Until COVID, I thought we were doing…not great on that…but squeaking by…..
Now, we are about to collectively experience a lot of pain, defaults, instability, anger…even civil unrest….unless we are willing to figure this out.
.
Except it’s not true. No one goes to bed hungry unless it’s by choice.
10 percent not having enough food isn’t the same thing as people going hungry.
Dieters aren’t eating the food they want but do so by choice.
The way the question is worded, you’d think 10 percent were going hungry, but that is simply not true, like at all.
Oh really? And exactly what evidence do you have for the Diet Theory of Hunger you’re proposing? This is about the most ridiculous comment I’ve read on this site so far.
See my comment to Realist above:
I wasn’t arguing that it was a “diet” theory. I was proposing that could be one answer. Unlike many posters, I actually read the links. Statistical analysis isn’t just about formign conclusions, it’s about asking the right questions, and the question above could be interpreted a number of ways.
Since I work in the industry, I suspect something like that, but not necessarily like that, is going on. If 10% of people were going hungry on a regular basis, you’d think I’d have met one by now in 10 years working with the government welfare programs. However, I have yet to meet one.
So either the statistics are being manipulated (they are) or out of the 3-4 thousand low income clients I’ve worked with there just happened to not be a single person who didn’t have enough food. Since the latter is mathematically impossible, I’m going with manipulation.
Covid does not impact how well food grows (may certainly impact its distribution, however). If less people can afford food (or anything for that matter), then the price of food must decline for it to sell – at least in a fair market.
Shall we distribute the goods and services in an economy fairly or not?
It’s inflation. The food will be available but shrinkflation and plain inflation is making grocery trips smaller.
Went to Lowes today. 1 2x4x8 is $6.50. Milk has gone from 1.39 to 2.89 in the span of 8 months. I expect milk gallons to start shrinking soon.
The problem with hunger and poverty has always been money.
There’s never been problems with people eating money b/c there was no food.
They shouldn’t of lived beyond their means.
Why should we the taxpayers bailout irresponsible people.
Worked at a homeless shelter for years
you know what people didn’t want food and cloths too much couldn’t give it to the needy
you know what they did want I bet you can take a guess misshy
Sounds like a logistics problem
There are different cohorts of homeless. I wonder if you may have been dealing with the large mental health/substance abuse cohort. Presently about one third of homeless are adults with children and there children.
I live in a town of 5,000 in fly-over country and buy lots of canned tomatoes. Just have to be sure there isn’t a ton of salt in them. If packaged junk food can reach these “food deserts”, I would imagine canned food can too. The point I was trying to make is that since there is an obesity problem (hard to deny that!), then providing food stamps for just healthy food makes sense. (Assuming we must supply food stamps to begin with…)
Indeed SoCaliforniaStan, they are called “the invisble homeless.” They are not the homeless stereotype of dugged/drunken men wandering the street – they are couch surfing or sleeping in their cars. Often whole families making do in a parking lot somewhere.
Time to emigrate to Russia ! ….and they even got a vaccine there …
That’s a myth that women with kids are homeless if you mean they do not have a roof over their heads. Low income housing (section 8 or HCV) prioritizes these and they are offered a roof before others.
No woman with kids lives on the streets unless she chooses to do so. Sadly, some do, and those that do typically have their kids immediately removed from them and placed with DSS.
For what it’s worth, I house low income people for a living and have done so for 10 years.
Homeless (those without a roof) are 99.9 percent men and even then, mostly pedophiles (who cannot obtain housing and comply with extremely restrictive laws) or the mentally ill.
If by homeless they have a roof over their heads but are staying with relatives, then yes, there’s a large number in this category. Even so, it’s a gray area, as a 25 year old woman with 2 kids living with their parents is considered “homeless” even if she is safe, warm and in a loving safe place.
Homeless doesn’t mean what people think it means.
Thanks for educating us on the topic, I did not know that.
dbannist: thank you for “the rest of the story.” Your edification is extraordinarily insightful for us “civilians.” “Statistics don’t lie, but liars sure use statistics.”
Why don’t we let the other 90% that are obese give them some food
Anything inhumane about making food stamps only redeemable for fresh/frozen fruits & vegetables? And maybe a small portion for meat and dairy?
Would help in some cases.
A lot of these people are probably trying to hang on to their house (rent/utilities) and their car, hoping if they can keep things going, the food will resolve itself somehow in the future. Once you have no home/car, you’re really on a downward slope: everything can only get harder and more expensive.
Sure beat on the poor, meanwhile the Fed is giving trillions to the rich.
Offering food stamps for only healthy food ain’t “beating on the poor”! Its mainly what I eat, by the way, and I feel a heck of a lot better because of it (compared to packaged food).
My number 1 target is the Fed, as they are the main culprit for the wealth disparity.
I venture to define it more precisely.
The FED keeps pumping trillions into the banking system, and lowering rates to the bottom.
Not surprisingly, a housing boom follows as people trying to flee to hard assets. House prices keep rising, and rents follow.
The low income population can’t afford to pay rent in good times.
Pandemic induced lockdown leads to unemployment, unpaid mortgages and homelessness.
The crime continues…
When you are stretching a dollar, rice, pasta, potatoes. Not to mention that many poor people live in “food deserts” where it’s difficult to even get fresh fruits and vegetables.
The technology doesn’t exist to be able to do this.
Mspehn, what would we call it if instead of calories we reallocated people’s financial holdings?
I find that a very sad answer to a real problem. Any government that is unable to feed every child in its care is not a real government of the people, the money is there, the political overseers send it elsewhere, I wonder where, over to you Mr Powell.