students have not kept up with inflation. “The equalizing effects of college, too, cannot be overstated,” says Lane Kenworthy, author of Jobs with Equality and other books on poverty and
mobility. “Among Americans whose family incomes at birth
are in the bottom fifth but who get four-year college degrees,
53 percent end up in the middle fifth or higher.”29
Turning to the bottom rungs of the education ladder, children’s early years are the time when educational efforts have
the most impact on their development, yet the United States
spends less as a share of GDP on early education than almost
all other industrialized countries.30 Economists, educators,
developmental psychologists, and even neuroscientists agree
this is when educational programs have greater potential to
improve long-run outcomes for low-income children than any
other time.31 By the time children from low-income families
enter kindergarten, they are usually already behind; for example, they have on average just one-third the vocabulary of
their peers from middle- and high-income families.32
The most widely accepted explanation of why U.S. workers
without educational credentials earn so little is that they don’t
have the skills to compete for better-paying jobs. While there
is truth in this, it is hardly the whole story. We can see this by
looking at the economy of the late 1990s. Wages began to rise
faster for low-wage workers than for others—but there was no
sudden upgrade in skills across this large share of the workforce. As important as education is to better economic outcomes, it is not the only way to counter downward pressure
on wages. Over the next decade, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, 70 percent of all new and replacement jobs
in the United States will require a high school education or
less.33 They shouldn’t have to be jobs that pay poverty-level
wages.
State and local leaders must own the fight against hunger in
their communities.
The federal government cannot end hunger by itself. Ending hunger will require a partnership between government,
the private sector, and civil society. And, in fact, federal, state,
and local partners united behind a common vision of a hunger-free nation can succeed in putting an end to hunger.
The Hunger Free Communities Network is a nationwide
platform for scaling up partnerships between federal leadership and state and local leadership. In 2005, Bread for the
World’s annual Offering of Letters campaign was to lobby
Congress to pass the Hunger-Free Communities (HFC) Act.
Eventually, Congress did pass the act, as part of the 2008
farm bill. In 2013, the status of the HFC Act could change
because Congress is expected to write a new farm bill, giving
legislators an opening to reconsider funding allocations. As
a share of federal spending, HFC is a very small program
($5 million) that authorizes grants to nonprofit, religious,
private sector, and public sector leaders working in their
communities to end hunger. Hunger-free initiatives across
6 Briefing Paper, March 2013
the country range in scale, from small towns and sparselypopulated counties to major metropolitan areas and states.
At their core, these initiatives are formed around the belief
that to end hunger in a specific community, a broad range of
stakeholders there must unite behind a common vision and
strategy.34
In Maryland, Governor Martin O’Malley is leading an initiative to end childhood hunger by 2015. Soon after taking
office as governor in 2007, he directed members of his cabinet
to come up with a set of goals; one of the goals established was
ending childhood hunger. Since the child hunger goal was set,
the number of eligible children participating in federal nutrition programs has risen dramatically. O’Malley’s strategy to
achieve this goal (and the 14 other goals of his administration)
is to build partnerships across various agencies of government and to involve private industry and the nonprofit sector.
To boost participation in the school breakfast program, for
example, the governor’s office had to cultivate a collaborative relationship with the school systems. O’Malley leaves the
implementation to the state’s partners; his responsibility is
to get Marylanders to see that the goal belongs to everyone.
Anyone can use the Internet to track how the state is doing in
boosting enrollment in the breakfast or lunch programs, for
example—making it easier to hold the governor accountable.
In 2008, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett set a goal
for the city to lose 1 million pounds. Oklahoma is ranked as
one of the least healthy states in the country; one primary
reason is its high obesity rate. It was 2012 when the city met its
million-pound goal. Cornett himself contributed 38 pounds
to the cause. “Leadership from the government executive is
essential,” says Mark Funkhouser, head of the nonpartisan
Government Institute and a former mayor of Kansas City.
“No one else can do the things that have to happen to move
the needle on major social issues.”35
If Maryland and Oklahoma City epitomize a top-down approach to leadership against hunger, the Texas Hunger Initiative (THI) is an example of a bottom-up strategy. THI is run
out of the Baylor University School of Social Work, but the
bulk of the work takes place in 15 communities around the
state. Jeremy Everett, director of THI, describes it as capacity
building to support local and state leaders.
THI organizes local communities by helping them create Food Planning Associations (FPA) in cities and counties
throughout Texas. FPAs bring together government and civic
leaders; representatives of faith communities, corporate leaders, and non-profit organizations; and people who have been
hungry themselves. “In very few Texas communities are policymakers actually leading,” says Everett. “Oftentimes they’re
just not very knowledgeable about hunger in their communities. But it’s important to have them at the table because when
political issues arise, these elected officials can streamline a
policy change.”36
FPAs function as strategic planning teams: they assess lo-