 |
| Safety net by heber F / flickr.com |
One year ago, around the same time in September (Hunger Action Month), I was slouched over
my desk in my downtown Washington, D.C., cubicle, grumbling to every coworker
within earshot. It was Friday of the 2011 SNAP Experience, and despite my best efforts, I’d seriously underestimated
my appetite and overestimated my willpower. I was looking at a weekend of
toast, spaghetti (but no sauce), and those waxy Red Delicious apples bred not
for their stellar taste but for their uniform aesthetic.
But this year, my colleagues weren’t party to much whining. I’d put
much more effort into buying food that would fill me up and last the whole week.
On my last day of the 2012 SNAP Experience, I had toast and apple juice for
breakfast, a banana and a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, and a pollock filet
and fresh green beans for dinner. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I’d been
successful in keeping my commitment to eat only what I’d purchased, too. I
hadn’t turned
down any tempting banquet invites, but I’d declined plenty of after-work
drink and dinner opportunities to stick to my budget. It seemed I’d exercised unprecedented
restraint. Feeling a little smug, I’d thought to myself, “this isn’t so bad!”
But I’m really no superwoman of self-control. This week was not easy –
staying within my $33 food budget (the average weekly SNAP
benefit in D.C.) had proven challenging – but it seemed do-able because I’d
had the game-changing advantage of a flexible non-food budget.
As the week wore on, I realized just how much energy it takes to resist
dietary urges. The free Nutrigrain cereal bars at work and the smell of warm
Quiznos on my walk home threatened my resolve. Homemade guacamole nearly broke
me. At the same time, I enjoyed virtually no flexibility to choose among the
foods I’d purchased for the week. So strictly portioned were my meals that I
ate the same thing, in the same quantity, for breakfast and lunch every day for
seven days. For dinner, I had my choice of fish and green beans (two days) or
spaghetti and salad (five days).
By mid-week, I felt deeply tired from denying all those food cravings,
and I desperately wanted to splurge, to feel renewed control over my spending
and my choices. On Tuesday, I did finally open my wallet, just not for food. As
luck would have it, my sister’s 21st birthday was Thursday. Due at least in part
to my weakened powers of self-control, my sister received a Dooney & Bourke
purse, a Calvin Klein scarf, and a glittery pair of earrings for her birthday.
As much as I love her, I’d certainly spent more on her gift than I originally
planned. And I’m convinced that extravagant assertion of my financial autonomy
is what made sticking to my SNAP budget relatively easier.
In some ways, my experience did mirror that of a family who relies on
SNAP. No matter who you are, research affirms that we spend a lot of time debating
whether to eat or abstain. In their fascinating book Willpower, authors Roy Baumeister and John Tierney describe a self-control
experiment carried out in Germany in 2010. Two hundred Germans wore beepers
that went off seven times a day. Each time their beepers vibrated, the subjects
reported any desires they were currently experiencing or experienced recently.
Sifting through more than 10,000 momentary reports, researchers concluded that
people spend one-fourth of their waking hours resisting their desires. The most
popular desire will be obvious to anyone who participated in ACAA’s SNAP
Experience. The urge to eat was more
popular than any of the other commonly reported desires, including the desire
to sleep, the desire for leisure, and the impulse for sexual activity.
But unlike in my imperfect poverty simulation, SNAP users are living in
or near poverty, and are forced to restrict spending in all areas. Behavioral
psychology researchers help
explain [PDF] how making budgetary decisions in a context of poverty is
particularly taxing:
“Imagine packing for a trip, using
either a small or large suitcase. If you have a large suitcase, it is an easy
task to pack everything important with room to spare. You may even choose not
to completely fill the suitcase. With a small suitcase, however, the task
becomes much more complex. If not all important items will fit, you must
consider trade-offs, such as what to take out if one more item is added. The
suitcase can represent any resource, such as money. In that case, someone with
ample resources can easily purchase all needed items with money left over. They
may consider the wisdom and value of a particular small purchase, but are not
likely to explicitly consider what other item must be given up in its place. In
contrast, someone with limited funds must spend a lot of time and mental energy
thinking about what to purchase, as each item chosen means some other item or
items is foregone. In other words, having fewer resources makes decision-making
much more complex. Complex problems draw on limited cognitive resources, which
in turn means that there are fewer resources available for self-control.”
The SNAP Experience, then, is like trying to pack a large-sized
suitcase with a too-small compartment for food but plenty of room for
everything else. Participants like me were making difficult food shopping and
consumption decisions (if I buy this meat, I can’t afford those vegetables; I
can eat either these eggs or that banana), but they maintained the option to
splurge in other areas, like birthday gifts, when their self-control reserves
got too low or they wanted to make a spontaneous purchase just to remember what
it felt like.
People living in poverty and receiving SNAP benefits also deal with the
too-tiny food compartment (their low SNAP benefit level), and they can also
pack away food in the remaining space (they could hypothetically spend money
out-of-pocket to supplement their SNAP benefit). But their suitcase is so small
that spending more on food means there’s less money left for rent, utilities,
child care, transportation, health care, and a host of other necessities. The
endless task of considering those much more complex trade-offs is exhausting. Difficult
budgetary decisions tire people out, and—as we know after our own SNAP
Experience—choosing among cheap and often unappetizing foods is a little
dehumanizing, too. The Dooney & Bourke release valve isn’t really an
option, and those families that do splurge anyway feel the damning financial
effects almost immediately.
All this is to say that my SNAP Experience wasn’t a true experience of
poverty—not by a long shot. I knew that when the going got tough in the grocery
department, I could find other ways to exert choice. I could rent a movie from
RedBox, buy a new blouse, take a taxi when the bus refused to show up, or even
take a couple days off from work for an impromptu weekend getaway. (I
didn’t, but it sounds pretty good, right?) I may have been stuck with peanut
butter sandwiches, but my consumer autonomy remained firmly intact.
This is no indictment of the SNAP Experience. Every poverty simulation
is imperfect because it’s exactly that—pretend. It’s impossible to experience
poverty unless you’re really in it for the long haul. But after my third SNAP
Experience I have learned two important lessons: First, everyone, no matter her
income, wants to feel financially autonomous. Second, the psychological effect
of poverty makes sound decision-making incredibly difficult.
Caring for each other as friends, neighbors, and direct services
providers requires that we all appreciate the messiness and frustration of
poverty. It’s not as easy as cutting the fat or tightening the belt. Heroic
personal responsibility won’t make high-stakes financial trade-offs any easier.
As voters in a representative democracy, we must also work to identify leaders
and spokespeople who truly get it. A
debate on SNAP benefit levels is about hunger and health, sure, but it’s also
about how we hope people with limited resources will participate in the economy
and how we can ease the financial and mental strain of poverty to enable people
to make the best decisions possible. SNAP could
be a tool for this kind of empowerment, but $33 per week in D.C. won’t get the job done.
Together, let’s elevate the conversation about
this important program and work to weave a social safety net that doesn’t just
catch us when we fall, but makes it easier to make the long climb back up.
.jpg)
This week, I'm participating in the third-annual Arizona Community Action Association SNAP Experience. (See their blog HERE.) This means I'll be consuming only the food I was able to buy with the average weekly SNAP (a.k.a. "food stamps") benefit in Washington, D.C. -- $33. (That's right! SNAP participants in D.C. receive, on average, less than $33 per person, per week for food.) The point of this exercise is to raise awareness around (1) how little the program provides, (2) how difficult it is to buy healthy foods on such a limited budget, and (3) how important the program is to families and the communities they live in.