The news is filled with talk of “the fiscal cliff” on Capitol Hill, but four years after the start of the Great Recession, as job prospects and wages languish and the costs of food, heat, housing and health care rise, many families are facing their own fiscal cliff right here in Massachusetts.  

The Boston Globe reported on this “new normal” in a recent article detailing how MassNeeds, a collaboration of more than 40 philanthropic organizations, has raised $8.4 million to support the nonprofits providing basic food, clothing and fuel and housing assistance – twice as much as last year.

When you dig into the data, though, it’s easy to see even that won’t be nearly enough.

The Boston Indicators Project report The Measure of Poverty  (September 2011) highlighted a rising need for safety net services – not just in Boston but across the Commonwealth.  That demand for assistance has not subsided, particularly when it comes to food.

As of the most recent data (August 2012), 493,214 Massachusetts households relied on SNAP/Food Stamps* to pay for basic nutritional needs—nearly 215,000 more than before the Recession began in July 2008 and 46,662 more than we cited in little more than a year ago in our report.

It’s one thing to look at a single chart showing total caseload in trying to understand the scale of need in Massachusetts right now, which is showing no sign of slowing down.  But this tells us little about who is in need, where that need is concentrated and where cuts in funding for programs like SNAP might be felt most harshly.  Mapping the latest data from the 2007-2011 American Community Survey provides some not-so-surprising but illuminating answers to those questions:

The maps below are interactive representations of SNAP/Food Stamp use by every municipality in Massachusetts.  The map, legend and table are interactive and linked to find more information: select a segment of the legend to see patterns of utilization in the map, hover over a town to see where it ranks in the table, or use the small icons in the bottom corner of the map to zoom in on a particular location of interest.

It’s the Gateway cities.  In places such as Holyoke, Springfield and Lawrence roughly one-third of all households received SNAP Food Stamps between 2007 and 2011—this is about twice the utilization rate of Boston.  Households in small, rural communities in North Central and Western Mass, such as Adams, Gardner and Orange also rely heavily on food supports.

The need is greatest for families with children.  In Boston, for instance, fewer than 16% of all households receive SNAP/food Stamps but nearly 30% of households with children rely on food assistance.  In Holyoke almost half of all households with children receive SNAP/Food Stamps.

Almost all households on SNAP/Food Stamps have at least one adult worker.  Food insecurity is increasingly hitting those households that have not only one but two adult workers.   In communities across Massachusetts—including very high-wealth towns like Dover, Weston—SNAP/Food Stamps are being utilized by the working poor.

Neighborhood-level data reveals deeper, more concentrated need.  Again, compared to some of the Gateway cities Boston has a relatively low SNAP/Food Stamp utilization rate at just under 16% of households.  However, when we drill down to census-tract-level data, particular areas in Boston’s neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan and East Boston emerge with some of the highest rates of reliance on food and nutritional support in the state.

Geography of Need in Massachusetts

By Jessica Martin

December 12, 20212