Economic numbers offer clues to low-income residents’ struggle with high inflation Signal Cleveland: Robert Fischer, associate professor and the co-director of the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, discussed the impact of inflation on food prices, which skyrocketed 11.4%. “We built these support systems, like food stamps [SNAP], that don’t change quickly even when you see this huge increase in food costs,” he said. “When people cannot do anything else to stretch their dollars, they end up at the pantries.” |