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U.S. figures include more than 764,000 here
\nThursday, November 20, 2008
\nBY JUDY PEET
\nStar-Ledger Staff
\nEven in one of the wealthiest states in America, one of every 11 New
\nJerseyans goes to bed without enough to eat, according to a report
\nreleased yesterday by the Food Research and Action Center in
\nWashington, D.C.<\/p>\n
Nationwide, the number of Americans struggling against hunger rose to
\n36.2 million in 2007, up by more than 3 million since 2000, according
\nto the center’s State of the States report on poverty and food
\ninsecurity issues. The number of people in the worst-off category —
\nthe hungriest — rose by 40 percent since 2000, to nearly 12 million
\npeople.<\/p>\n
“The nation’s economic crisis brings with it rising rates of hunger.
\nHowever, we also have an excellent opportunity to resolutely address
\nthe hunger problem with a new president and a new Congress,” said Jim
\nWeill, president of the FRAC, a national nonprofit policy
\norganization.<\/p>\n
The report, based on United States Department of Agriculture figures,
\nanalyzed poverty, hunger and access to federal nutrition programs by
\nstate. Among its findings:<\/p>\n
* The 36.2 million hungry people in the U.S. include 23.8 million
\nadults and 12.4 million children.<\/p>\n
* Black (22.2 percent) and Hispanic (20.1 percent) households
\nexperienced hunger at far higher rates than the national average.<\/p>\n
* The five states with the highest rates of hunger were Mississippi,
\nNew Mexico, Texas, Arkansas and Maine.<\/p>\n
New Jersey has one of the lowest poverty rates in the nation, and the
\nhunger rate here is 8.8. percent, nearly half that of Mississippi.
\nYet even here, more than 764,000 people go hungry, and New Jersey has
\none of the lowest participation rates in both free school breakfast
\nand food stamp programs of any state, the report said.<\/p>\n
The state ranked in the bottom 10 for food stamp participation, with
\nless than 60 percent of those eligible actually receiving assistance.
\nIt ranked in the bottom six with a 65 percent participation rate for
\nfree and reduced-price school breakfasts.<\/p>\n
Discouraging as the figures are, they were based on 2007 federal
\nstatistics. Hunger experts in New Jersey, and across the country,
\npredict that 2008 will be even more dismal.<\/p>\n
“Emergency pantries are reporting a 30 percent increase in the
\nnumbers of people seeking food assistance (this year), compared with
\n2007 numbers,” said Meara Nigro at Community FoodBank in Hillside,
\nthe state’s largest food bank. “Clearly the level of hunger resulting
\nfrom this economic crisis is bigger than charities alone can handle.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
14\/122715831025100.xml&coll=1# continue U.S. figures include more than 764,000 here Thursday, November 20, 2008 BY JUDY PEET Star-Ledger Staff Even in one of the wealthiest states in America, one of every 11 New Jerseyans goes to bed without enough to eat, according to a report released yesterday by the Food Research and Action Center in Washington, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":84496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[745],"class_list":["post-7543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-economic-crisis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}