Midnight shopping on the brink of poverty, By Jamie Tarabay, October 2, 2010, National Public Radio: “Take a trip to one of those 24-hour Walmarts on the last day of every month, and you’ll get a glimpse into the lives of low-income families trying to get by. At one location in Fredericksburg, Va., at around 11 p.m., families start to load up on necessities like diapers and groceries. People like Tracy and Martin Young live nearby, and for the pair in their early 30s, it’s a chance to shop quietly without their five children, two of whom are teenagers. Each is pushing a shopping cart overflowing with food. There’s mac and cheese, bags of cereal and cans of evaporated milk. Most of this has to last for the whole month. Despite torrential rain outside and flash-flood warnings across the area, the couple arrives to shop. Tracy Young says they’ve been doing this midnight run on the last day of every month for so long now that they’re on a first-name basis with Gloria, their cashier. ‘It’s been about a year. We used to go to Bloom, and then we found out we were saving more coming here,’ Tracy Young says. At a stroke or two after midnight they begin unloading their carts at the checkout. Tracy says they set aside $500 for groceries a month. With five kids, the money they get never lasts until the next monthly check. ‘It’s usually about a week and a half,’ she says. ‘We try to figure out what we need to do about a week and a half before the end of the month.’ That’s why they’re here at midnight: It’s when their food stamps and government checks for their 3-year-old daughter kick in on the first of every month…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty