Ending Hunger in America, 2014 Hunger Report Full Report | Page 103

CHAPTER 3
the Great Depression and through the first years of World War II. A more recent example
is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund, established
under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) of 2009. The program
achieved impressive results in its short life. Running for less than two years, at a cost of $1.3
billion, the TANF Emergency Fund provided jobs for more than a quarter-million hard-toemploy people.11
A total of 33 states operated programs targeted to adults; 24 states
and the District of Columbia operated programs targeted to youth;
and 19 states operated programs
for both adults and youth. Participants were placed in a variety of
jobs, mostly in the private sector,
and the program worked with
employers to provide jobs to individuals they might not otherwise
be willing to hire.12 States had a
great deal of flexibility in how they
administered the program, the
one condition being that the families who benefited had to include
children.
The TANF Emergency Fund
proved that the federal government could support a large-scale
cost-effective employment program quickly and efficiently. The program’s accomplishments
make a good case for establishing a permanent program to offer jobs to enable parents with
significant barriers to employment to support their children.

At-Risk Youth
Dropping out of high school is a decision that carries lifelong consequences. Most people
without high school diplomas will be consigned to jobs at poverty-level wages. Hunger rates
are higher for high school dropouts than for those who graduate and far higher than for
those who earn a postsecondary credential. Sixty percent of inmates in the nation’s prisons
and jails do not have a high school degree or GED.13 The closest thing we know to a sustainable solution to hunger is a high-quality education starting right out of the cradle. We must
end the practice of providing low-income children with fewer educational resources rather
than more.

Joe Molieri/Bread for the World

Dominic Duren snaps a
picture of his children.
Both he and his wife
work and share the
tasks of raising their
children.

A Human-Capital Challenge
Any way you look at it, dropping out of high school is a very bad decision. Over the course
of their working lifetimes, a high school dropout earns an average of $400,000 less than a high
school graduate and $1 million less than a college graduate.14 A person’s human capital—the

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