More Impoverished Americans Suffer From Hunger
It was revealed recently in a report issued by Feeding America that one in eight Americans doesn’t have enough to eat and requires emergency food assistance. Feeding America is a network made up of thousands of food pantries, soup kitchens and similar agencies serving 37 million American people.
Feeding America held 61,000 face to face interviews and surveyed more than 37,000 charitable agencies to get a sense of how much insecurity their clients felt about being able to obtain food food. People that responded that they were insecure said they couldn’t afford to buy more food once they had run out, that they had been forced to skip meals because they could not afford to eat, and that they could not afford to eat when they were hungry.
Feeding America now serves 37 million people yearly; 14 million are children. That’s a 46 percent increase in people that need emergency hunger relief since 2006. Seventy nine percent of the 14.5 million households helped out by FA have annual incomes that fall below the official federal poverty line. The federal poverty line is $22,025 for a family of FOUR. Ten percent of families are currently homeless, sixty percent don’t have access to a car. Not surprisingly, more than one third of FA clients are now employed but still struggle to get enough to eat.