在美国挨饿（《纽约时报•早晨》中英对照）

The Morning

: Going hungry in America

《早晨》：在美国挨饿

March 17, 2023

By German Lopez

2023年3月17日

作者：哲尔曼·洛佩兹

Good morning. America’s neediest are dealing with food stamp cuts and rising prices at the same time.

早上好。美国最贫困的人群同时面临着食品券削减和物价上涨的问题。

A Dollar General in Lexington, S.C., in 2021.

Erin Schaff /

The New York Times

2021年，南卡罗来纳州列克星敦的一美元店。

艾琳·沙夫 /《纽约时报》 A 'hunger cliff'

“饥饿之崖”

Earlier this year, millions of Americans got a notice: Your food budget is about to be cut, potentially by hundreds of dollars a month. Here are some tips on how you can manage. You can’t appeal. 今年早些时候，数百万美国人收到通知：你的食品预算即将削减，可能是每月数百美元。这里有一些关于如何管理的建议。你不能申诉。 The notices signaled the coming end of a federal increase in food stamps that started in the early days of the pandemic, when unemployment spiked and lawmakers feared that hunger would, too. 这些通知标志着联邦政府增加食品券的做法即将结束，这种做法始于疫情早期，当时失业率飙升，议员们担心饥饿也会飙升。 The cuts come at a particularly bad time for low-income Americans. Grocery prices increased 10 percent over the past year, according to data released this week. It amounts to a one-two punch: The country’s neediest have less aid to pay for food as it’s getting more expensive. 对低收入的美国人来说，削减预算的时机尤其糟糕。 本周公布的数据显示，食品杂货价格在过去一年里上涨了10%。 这相当于一记组合拳：随着食品价格上涨，该国最贫困人口获得的援助减少了。 The big question is what happens now. Some experts have warned that the country is approaching a “hunger cliff,” with the number of Americans going hungry likely to spike this spring. To buy food, other families may have to use money that would otherwise have gone to rent or other bills — and fall behind on those payments. 最大的问题是现在会发生什么。一些专家警告说，美国正在接近“饥饿之崖”，今年春天挨饿的美国人数量可能会激增。为了购买食物，其他家庭可能不得不动用原本用于房租或其他账单的钱，从而拖欠这些款项。 The stress on family food budgets represents a tangible example of how a recent rise in the nation’s poverty rate is affecting people’s lives. The poverty rate fell sharply in 2021 — to 7.8 percent by one measure, from 11.8 percent in 2019 — thanks mostly to economic relief laws that Congress passed in response to Covid. But Congress has let many provisions expire, and the poverty rate rose in 2022 as a result. 家庭食品预算的压力是最近国家贫困率上升如何影响人们生活的一个具体例子。 贫困率在2021年大幅下降，从2019年的11.8%降至7.8%，这主要归功于国会为应对新冠肺炎而通过的经济救济法。 但国会让许多条款到期，导致贫困率在2022年上升。 “It is a very large and abrupt change,” said Ellen Vollinger of Food Research and Action Center, an advocacy group. “The hardship will fall on these families.” “这是一个非常大而突然的变化，”倡导组织食品研究与行动中心（Food Research and Action Center）的艾伦·沃林格（Ellen Vollinger）说，“困难将落在这些家庭身上。” Emergencies’ end

紧急救济计划的结束

We already have a glimpse of how the food stamp cuts will play out. This month’s cuts ended the expanded benefits in the 32 states that still had them, but 18 states had already revoked their extra benefits. In those 18 states, food insecurity, which measures insufficient access to food, rose more quickly than in states that kept the benefits, researchers at Northwestern University and the Jain Family Institute found. 我们已经看到了削减食品券将如何发挥作用。本月的削减结束了32个州的扩大福利，但18个州已经取消了他们的额外福利。西北大学（Northwestern University）和杰恩家庭研究所（Jain Family Institute）的研究人员发现，在这18个州，食品不安全状况（衡量获得食物的途径不足）的上升速度比保留福利的州更快。 These charts from my colleague Ashley Wu show the trend in four of the states that cut food stamps earlier. The data fluctuates. But generally, more households struggled to get enough to eat after the cuts: 我的同事阿什利·吴（Ashley Wu）绘制的这些图表显示了较早削减食品券的四个州的趋势。数据是波动的。但总的来说，削减后，越来越多的家庭难以获得足够的食物:

Sources: Jack Landry,

Jain Family Institute; U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey

| Data is through August 2022. | By

The New York Times

资料来源：杰克·兰德里，

杰恩家庭研究所；美国人口普查局家庭脉搏调查

（数据截止到2022年8月）绘制：《纽约时报》 The situation could get worse. When many of those 18 states cut benefits, food prices were rising less quickly than they have been more recently. The government adjusts food stamps for inflation, but only once a year, in October. So if prices keep rising quickly, the real value of food stamps will fall behind for the next several months. 情况可能会变得更糟。当这18个州中的许多州削减福利时，食品价格上涨的速度比最近要慢。政府根据通货膨胀调整食品券，但每年只在10月份调整一次。因此，如果物价继续快速上涨，食品券的实际价值在未来几个月将会下降。 Food stamp benefits will still be higher than they were before the pandemic because the Biden administration separately increased them in 2021. But those increases don’t outweigh the end of emergency benefits for many recipients, meaning their food budgets will still decrease. 食品券福利仍将高于疫情前，因为拜登政府在2021年单独提高了食品券福利。 但对许多受援者来说，这些增长并没有超过紧急救济的结束，这意味着他们的食品预算仍将减少。 Some conservatives say the warnings are overblown. Angela Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute argued that the effects of the emergency benefits were exaggerated and that they were always supposed to be temporary. 一些保守派人士说，这些警告言过其实。 美国企业研究所（American Enterprise Institute）的安吉拉•拉奇迪（Angela Rachidi）认为，紧急救济的效果被夸大了，它们一直被认为是暂时的。 Return to normal

回归正常

Ultimately, the food stamp cuts will probably push more people — potentially millions more — into poverty, said Megan Curran of the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. That increase will largely erase what remains of recent years’ progress on the issue. 哥伦比亚大学贫困与社会政策研究中心的梅根·柯伦说，最终，食品券的削减可能会使更多人——可能是数百万人——陷入贫困。这一增长将在很大程度上抹去近年来在这个问题上取得的进展。 In that sense, the food stamp cuts fit into a broader story: During the pandemic, the U.S. expanded its safety net to prevent the worst outcomes of a crashing economy. Those policies worked to keep people out of poverty. But now that the economy has recovered from the initial pandemic shock, Congress is letting the safety net shrink back down. And poverty is rising back to where it once was. 从这个意义上讲，食品券的削减符合一个更广泛的情况：在疫情期间，美国扩大了其安全网，以防止经济崩溃的最坏结果。这些政策使人们摆脱了贫困。但现在经济已经从最初的大流行冲击中复苏，国会正在让安全网重新收缩。贫困正在恢复到以前的水平。

Related:

We know how to end poverty in the U.S. We just don’t want to, Matthew Desmond writes in

Times Opinion

.

相关内容：

我们知道如何结束美国的贫困，只是我们不想这样做，马修·德斯蒙德在《纽约时报》的观点专栏中写道。

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

— German

谢谢你早上花时间看《纽约时报》。明天见。

——哲尔曼

Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

马修·卡伦、劳伦·哈德、劳伦·杰克逊、克莱尔·摩西、伊恩·普拉萨德·菲尔布里克、汤姆·赖特-皮尔桑蒂和阿什利·吴为《早晨》杂志撰稿。您可以通过themorning@nytimes.com与团队联系。

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