Food stamp rolls reach historic levels, By Pamela M. Prah, February 7, 2011, Stateline.org: “Dorene is a certified teacher in Idaho, but the only job she can find is as a teaching assistant, which pays under $11 an hour. That is considerably less than the $45,000 that the average teacher in Idaho earns annually. She asked that her full name not be used because her family doesn’t know she has been getting food stamp benefits for her two young children and herself for a year. ‘We live paycheck to paycheck,’ she says, even with child support. ‘I never thought I’d be in this situation.’ Nationwide, one in seven Americans currently receives help from the government to put food on the table. All but 14 states saw double-digit spikes in the number of people getting food stamps over the one-year period that ended in November 2010. But Idaho had the largest one-year increase in the country: 28 percent, according to the latest government figures…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty