{"id":3481,"date":"2023-01-05T03:45:59","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T09:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3481"},"modified":"2023-03-16T21:36:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T02:36:53","slug":"a-quarter-of-us-service-members-have-been-food-insecure-new-report-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3481","title":{"rendered":"A quarter of US service members have been food insecure, new report finds<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just over a quarter of US service members have experienced food insecurity in recent years, according to\u00a0a new report from the RAND Corporation.
\nThe report, released this week, said that 25.8% of Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard personnel were food insecure. More than half of that percentage \u2013 15.4% \u2013 were active duty troops.
\n\u201cWe were surprised at the estimate. \u2026 I mean that\u2019s a lot of people,\u201d Dr. Beth Asch, a senior economist at RAND and the lead author of the report, told CNN.
\nRAND\u2019s research was requested by the Defense Department, the report says, after the DOD was mandated by Congress in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to report on food insecurity among service members.
\nThe report from RAND looked at data from 2016 and 2018 reports from the Pentagon over the active duty force to come to their estimate, which Asch said was virtually the same as the Defense Department\u2019s 2020 estimate. While they were unable to include the 2020 report in their own study, Asch said the estimate of around 25% of service members is the most current assessment available.
\nFinancial insecurity is not a new concern for service members. The issue\u00a0was addressed in 2021\u00a0by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who directed the temporary increase of basic housing allowance in some high-cost areas and said the military would provide relief \u201cto alleviate economic insecurity.\u201d
\n\u201cOur men and women in uniform and their families have enough to worry about,\u201d Austin said at the time. \u201cBasic necessities like food and housing shouldn\u2019t be among them.\u201d
\nWhile putting together their report, RAND held conversations with military commanders, on-base officials who worked on financial planning, and community providers. In those conversations, the report says that nearly everyone they spoke with agreed that food insecurity was a problem among active duty troops, but there were \u201cwide disagreements\u201d on the prevalence of the issue.
\nOne person at a military installation told RAND that food insecurity \u201chas always been something that\u2019s come up.\u201d Another person said that the issue of food insecurity is \u201cbigger than we can even get our arms around.\u201d
\n\u201cAs compared to the general population, certainly the poverty experience is very different,\u201d a military installation representative told RAND. \u201cService members aren\u2019t living in poverty in the same way. But \u2026 it\u2019s also the dirty little secret: that there are service members with families and children making the salary of an E-4 who need help getting food on the table.\u201d
\nBut it\u2019s been difficult for outside organizations and the DOD to understand where the insecurity is stemming from. Asch said the causes are not clear and that was one of the things they left the survey not quite having a handle on, primarily because it was not a part of what they were asked to research by the Defense Department. But understanding the why will be crucial to being able to stop it, she said.
\n\u201cWhat we did look at suggests there\u2019s a myriad of underlying causes,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I guess the question is, to what extent those causes are specific to being military. What I mean by that is we know that military personnel move around a lot, they\u2019re asked to change locations every few years, and that can have a financial impact on the spouse and their spouse employment. \u2026 Is there something about that, about military service, that\u2019s driving that? We just don\u2019t know. We suspect there could be those factors, but there could be other factors.\u201d
\nIndeed, those who spoke with RAND for the report pointed to a number of possible causes.
\nThe report identified multiple barriers to service members receiving assistance including the stigma surrounding asking for help, with troops believing that if they seek out assistance their careers will be negatively impacted. The report also said that the military\u2019s culture of \u201cself-sufficiency and pride has kept members from seeking help for food or financial insecurity,\u201d and that troops are afraid of being viewed negatively by their leadership for doing so.
\nSpousal employment issues, especially when combined with challenges from Covid-19 and permanent change of station (PCS) moves, was another significant issue that respondents said contributed to food insecurity and financial challenges.<\/p>\n

Cnn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just over a quarter of US service members have experienced food insecurity in recent years, according to\u00a0a new report from the RAND Corporation. The report, released this week, said that 25.8% of Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard personnel were food insecure. More than half of that percentage \u2013 15.4% \u2013 were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3627,3626,1446,3625,1156,1500,1447,1182],"class_list":["post-3481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-active-duty","tag-army","tag-food","tag-insecurity","tag-military","tag-pentagon","tag-quarter","tag-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3481"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7811,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481\/revisions\/7811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}