More Missourians are experiencing hunger than in over a decade, according to a new University of Missouri study.
The 2016 Missouri Hunger Atlas, produced by the university's Interdisciplinary Center for Food Security, measures levels of food insecurity - the term used for those who worry about having enough food. Once every few years, the university center releases an updated report.
The percentage of food-insecure, hungry Missourians has doubled from 4 to 8 percent in 12 years, said Sandy Rikoon, director of the center, and that's one of the most troubling findings of this year's study.
Higher poverty rates correlate to increased food insecurity, Rikoon said, and stagnant wages have contributed to both problems. He added people working minimum-wage jobs are a specific population seeing "fairly flat" income levels while expenses have continued to rise.
Unemployment rates and single-parent households with children population
percentages also determine levels of food insecurity. Food-insecure households also have higher health costs, he said, as they are twice as likely to suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure and hypertension.
Low-income households - facing the dilemma of how to prioritize bills - often expense food last, Rikoon said, and financial challenges come toward the end of the month for those living paycheck to paycheck.
"Before the next paycheck comes, I think they are getting squeezed harder at the end of the month more than they have before," Rikoon said.
Darren Chapman, a graduate research and teaching assistant in the rural sociology department, also cited slashes to government assistance sustained during the Great Recession and a slow bounceback from that economic downturn to more hungry and food-insecure Missourians.
"We're still seeing consequences of the recession from 2008-09," he said. "We're just now getting back on track economically, but people don't have the same supports and safety nets they once had."
Cole County is categorized as a low-need, high-performance county in the hunger atlas. This means there is less food insecurity in the county than the state average and more ways to meet the needs. In 2013, the study gave Cole County the very low-need, average-performance ranking.
Of the county's total population, 15.4 percent are food insecure. The state average at 16.4 percent. Of those who are food insecure, 19.8 percent are under 18 and 7.2 percent experience hunger.
Rikoon said governments and individual communities both have a responsibility to combat hunger.
Systemic issues worsening the state of food insecurity include high health care costs, changes to Social Security and other adjustments to government assistance, he said. When a government maintains or cuts assistance spending, more pressure is placed on the private sector and individual communities.
"The system, so to speak, is definitely part of the solution; but communities, I think, also have a responsibility, especially in terms of emergency food assistance," Rikoon said. "This is not hunger like some of the countries I've work in in other parts of the world where people are chronically hungry. This is usually short term, like at the end of the week or end of the month for several days, so the assistance that food banks and food pantries provide is really critical."
Collaborating with Mid-Missouri food pantries, Chapman said, he's seen more people relying on those resources for longer periods of time. Because the items food pantries receive is in constant flux, regulars can't depend on receiving certain foods or amounts of food at any given time.
He said the Food Bank of Central and Northeast Missouri is a "bright spot" for the region, though. In 2015, the organization distributed more than 1.3 million pounds of food to Cole County food pantries, nonprofit groups and schools. The food was distributed at no cost, which Chapman said gives individual food pantries an advantage to feeding the hungry.
"It makes a big difference in the amount of food and number of individuals they can serve," he said.
The 2016 Hunger Atlas showed southern Missouri, specifically in the Ozarks and bootheel, continues to remain the most food-insecure region in Missouri. Northern Missouri is getting worse, which Chapman credited in part to an aging population.