Why Do American Families Go Hungry?

• The United States produces enough food for all of its people, and much of the rest of the world as well, yet widespred hunger exists within its own borders.
• Millions of working families exist on low-wage jobs which do not pay enough to meet their rent and medical bills...while also leaving enough money to buy food for their children.
• Employed parents with young children are now the fastest-growing group at emergency food programs in local communities.
• Even today, many hungry children in working families do not get a school breakfast, and their families do not get food stamps, though they are eligible and hungry.
• Some say that the hungry should be fed by local charities, but even these programs themselves say they are overwhelmed by growing numbers of hungry people.
• Yet, we have the knowledge and infrastructure to see that no family — and no child — ever goes hungry.
• No nation has ever ended hunger without strong national leadership and focused public policies.

The Nation's Precarious Emergency Food System

During the 1960s and 1970s, our nation's leaders nearly ended hunger by working together on a bipartisan basis to create and expand federal nutrition programs like Food Stamps, School Lunch and School Breakfast, and other special elderly and child nutrition programs.

But lack of resolve led to the weakening of these successful programs, and they now fail to reach millions who could benefit from their protection. To help remedy this shortcoming, an array of "emergency food programs" sprang up around the nation. Largest among them are food banks, programs which receive, store and distribute food products donated by manufacturers and grocery chains. The largest system of food banks operates under the name America's Second Harvest, and is a network of nearly 200 programs covering all states.

Food banks distribute their products to local programs. Emergency food pantries exist in all states and most communities around the country. Nearly 50,000 agencies such as churches and social service agencies offer bags of groceries to needy families through this system, although many of them report that they often run out of food and simply cannot continue to keep their fingers in the hunger dyke forever.

Many communities also have "soup kitchens", places where hungry people can come for a meal. While these facilities used to serve mainly single adults, their largest growing segment of clients are families with children.

The nation can be proud of this emergency response to hunger, managed by staff and volunteers who are trying to alleviate hunger temporarily. But people who work in these programs also say that they have a job that should not exist. By this they mean that no one should go hungry in a wealthy nation, and that our goal should be to have strong national policies and programs that prevent hunger, so that parents do not have to take their children from home in order to get an emergency hand-out.