March 9, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
More than 25 million people sought food last year from the America’s Second Harvest network of hunger-relief organizations, an 8-percent increase since 2001, a new study has found.
Nine million of those receiving aid were children and nearly three million were 65 or older.
Thirty-eight percent were black and 17 percent were Latino, according to the study, which was based on 52,000 interviews with people receiving emergency food assistance and surveys completed by 30,000 hunger-relief organizations.
“It is tragic and alarming that more and more people are relying on emergency food assistance in the United States, where we produce enough food to feed every hungry person in the world,” Robert Forney, the organization’s president, said in a statement.
The study was commissioned by America’s Second Harvest Network, a 200-member organization that distributes food to about 45,000 food pantries, shelters, and soup kitchens nationwide.
Working People
About 70 percent of those who received help were living below the federal poverty line, with incomes of less than $15,670 a year for a family of three in 2004. But more than a third (36 percent) of those polled were employed or had a family member who was employed.
“We know that nearly 40 percent of our clients had at least one adult in the household working, which tells us that people who are even making a living wage still can’t provide food for themselves and oftentimes their families,” said Maura Daly, director of communications.
The survey found that many needy people were not receiving government aid or could not make government assistance stretch to cover their needs.
Just 35 percent of households served by the hunger-relief groups also received food stamps, although it is likely that a much greater percentage of people were eligible for such aid, the study said.
Seventy percent of those polled, meanwhile, were deemed “food insecure,” meaning they do not always have access to enough food to meet their basic needs.
Forty-one percent said they had to decide between paying for food and paying for utilities; 35 percent had to choose between food and rent or mortgage; and 32 percent said they could only afford medicine and medical care or food, but not both.
Women made up the majority (60 percent) of adults receiving assistance, and single-parent families represented nearly 55 percent of all households with children who sought help from the food banks.
Hunger-relief organizations rely heavily on volunteers to provide food aid, the study found.
Sixty-six percent of pantries, 40 percent of kitchens, and 11 percent of shelters were run entirely by volunteers, while an estimated 14 percent of Americans said they had volunteered with food-aid organizations in the past year.
A large percentage of pantries, shelters, and kitchens that participated in the survey described themselves as religious organizations.
Seventy-three percent of food pantries, 65 percent of soup kitchens, and 43 percent of shelters said they were “faith-based” or affiliated with a religion.
A report on the study, “Hunger in America 2006,” can be obtained free online at http://www.hungerinamerica.org.
