Report: Hunger and Food Insecurity

Posted on August 12, 2011 by townsend

• Hunger grips Pa.’s First District, report finds, By Alfred Lubrano, August 12, 2011, Philadelphia Inquirer: “A new report that astonished even experts on hunger shows that half of all households with children in Pennsylvania’s First Congressional District can’t always afford to buy enough food. The district – which includes Kensington, parts of North and South Philadelphia, and Chester – is the second-hungriest place for families in the United States, according to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), the leading antihunger nonprofit in the nation. The report seems to establish Philadelphia as a locus of American poverty. With an overall poverty rate of 25 percent, Philadelphia is the poorest big city (population over one million) in the country. And the FRAC report shows that high levels of hunger are very much a part of life here…”
• Hunger an issue for 25 percent of N.Y. families with kids, By Cara Matthews, August 11, 2011, Ithaca Journal: “Nearly 25 percent of New York households with children reported in 2009 and 2010 that they didn’t always have enough money to buy food, according to a national Food Research and Action Center report released Thursday. The study found that 23.4 percent of families with children nationwide and 23.3 percent in New York said they had experienced food hardship at times during the past 12 months – meaning they at times could not afford food for the adults or children in the household. The rate was 14.6 percent for households without children. New York ranked 29th among all states in the analysis by the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group. It was one of 41 states with rates between 20 percent and 29.9 percent. Three states are 30 percent or higher – Mississippi (32.5 percent), Alabama (32 percent) and Florida (30 percent)…”
• Florida fourth in nation for ‘food hardship,’ group says, By Catherine Whittenburg, August 12, 2011, Tampa Tribune: “Nearly one out of three Florida families, and 27 percent of those in the Tampa-Bay area, are struggling to put enough food on their tables, according to a new study released on Thursday. Florida ranks fourth among the 50 states and Washington, D.C. for the rate at which its families were unable to afford enough food in 2010, according to the Food Research and Action Center, a national nonprofit group that advocates for government policies to end hunger…”