- Food stamp demand rises in Minnesota as budget shrinks, By Jennifer Brooks, October 28, 2013, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “It’s the Wednesday dinner rush at the Friends in Need food shelf and a little girl stares wide-eyed at tables piled high with fresh fruits and vegetables. ‘Can we have some carrots? I love carrots,’ she asked a volunteer, who smiled and filled a bag for the family to add to their cart, next to donations of canned goods, cereal, milk, apples and baked goods in St. Paul Park. More than 554,000 Minnesotans get federal food assistance — one out of every 10 people in the state. A third are children. Another quarter are elderly or disabled adults. Contrary to popular stereotypes, a majority live in families where at least one adult earns a paycheck…”
- Cuts coming to food stamp program with more proposed, but how far should they go?, By Cliff Pinckard, October 29, 2013, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “There are more than 47 million people using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps. It’s a number that has doubled during the past decade, according to UPI. Just over 1.8 million people in Ohio use food stamps, according to 2012 data. The program costs the government $75 billion annually. But cuts are coming. A 13.6 percent boost that was part of the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act will expire on Friday. That will mean a cost reduction of $5 billion in 2014 and about $11 billion through 2016 for the federal government, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It also will tighten the budgets of food stamp recipients…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty