Wholly unsubstantiated complaints

It's been awhile since we've posted here, but that doesn't mean that the Oklahoman isn't running stupid letters. A great example comes from Ethan Thomas of Edmond. He writes:

According to Rodney Bivens, executive director of the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma (Your Views, Feb. 11), 'one in four Oklahoma children is uncertain where their next meal will come from.' Says who? This appears to be one of those often quoted and widely believed but wholly unsubstantiated statistics that never get challenged, because 'everyone knows it’s true.'

OK. So at this point, any reasonably competent person would use this thing called "Google" (it's a search engine for this thing called the "Internet") and try to get to the bottom of how this Regional Food Bank arrives at its numbers. But is Mr Thomas a reasonably competent person? Of course not. So instead, he writes:

This type of statistic is usually based on the number of people below the poverty line, or the number of people using food stamps. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has disavowed the practice of correlating food stamp statistics with hunger statistics or 'food insecurity' statistics. They have nothing to do with each other.

To be clear, at this point Mr Thomas is just sure that he knows how these numbers are arrived at, and then he mentions that the USDA has disavowed something or other. Like, that's it for him. He read a statistic, thought "says who?" because he doesn't really want to believe things are as bad as they are, he then dreams up some reason why the statistic is not true, and he's done.

How arrogantly stupid do you have to be to think that you, sitting there for like 3 or 4 minutes, know more than these huge organizations that put incredible resources towards better understanding their cause? Seriously. What newspaper would run a letter like this??

Again, if you just use Google, you will find out how they arrive at these statistics. Finding this took literally one minute. In their technical brief, Feeding America spells out everything. They begin:

Full Population of Counties (and Congressional Districts) 

We proceed in two steps to estimate the extent of food insecurity in each county. In what follows, the descriptions are for counties but, except where otherwise noted, they also apply to congressional districts. Because congressional districts were redrawn in 2012 and the most current data from the ACS reflects the former district boundaries, the current MMG estimates do not correspond with the current congressional districts. Due to this limited relevancy, congressional district data were not included in the discussion but are available on request, email research@feedingamerica.org Step 1: Using state-level data from 2001-2011, we estimate a model where the food insecurity rate for individuals at the state level is determined by the following equation: 

FI_st = α + β_UNUN_st + β_POVPOV_st + β_MIMI_st + β_HISPHISP_st + β_BLACKBLACK_st + β_ownOWN_st + μ_t + υ_s + ε_st 

where s is a state, t is year, UN is the unemployment rate, POV is the poverty rate, MI is median income, HISP is the percent Hispanic, BLACK is the percent African-American, OWN is the percent of individuals who are homeowners, μ_t is a year fixed effect, υ_s is a state fixed effect, and ε_st is an error term. The inclusion of OWN is new this year—in previous years, we only used the other variables. This model is estimated using weights defined as the state population. The set of questions used to identify whether someone is food insecure, i.e., living in a food insecure household, are defined at the household level.

Holy shit! This looks a little more complex than the shit Mr Thomas was sitting around pretending to know about. And that's the point. The organizations that are trying to help with hunger aren't out there just making shit up and winging it. And just because Mr Thomas, living in posh Edomond, can't imagine that hunger statistics are real, doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of data behind them that demonstrates that they are.

Any real newspaper wouldn't bother with some armchair quarterback crying bah-humbug about the plight of the poor, but the Oklahoman isn't a real newspaper and instead works hard to push its own agenda.