WASHINGTON — More than one in seven American households struggled to put enough food on the table in 2008, the highest number since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began tracking food security levels in 1995.
That’s 14.6 percent of U.S. households, or about 49 million people. The numbers are a significant increase from 2007, when 11.1 percent of U.S. households suffered from what USDA classifies as “food insecurity” — not having enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle.
In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children — more than one in five across the United States — were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million children the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.
Among people of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the numbers could be higher in 2009 because of the global economic slowdown.
The report suggests that the main federal programs intended to help people struggling to get adequate food are only partly fulfilling their purpose. Slightly more than half the people surveyed who reported they had food shortages said that they had, in the previous month, participated in one of the government’s main anti-hunger and nutrition programs: food stamps, subsidized school lunches or WIC, the nutrition program for women with babies or young children.
Last year, people in 4.8 million households used private food pantries, compared with 3.9 million in 2007, while people in about 625,000 households resorted to soup kitchens, nearly 90,000 more than the year before.
Food shortages, the report shows, are particularly pronounced among women raising children alone. Last year, more than one in three single mothers reported that they struggled for food and more than one in seven said someone in their home had been hungry — far eclipsing the food problem in any other kind of household.
The report also found that people who are black or Hispanic were more than twice as likely as whites to report that food in their home was scarce.
U.N. officials say roughly 1 billion people — one of every six people on the planet — don’t get enough to eat.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
