Starlifter
Serious Thumper
Offline
It only snows seven months of the year here.
Posts: 3746
Eastern Michigan
Gender: 
|
"Consider this very simple fact. No one dies in the United States from starvation. No one. It never happens." Webster
Maybe, maybe not....but, you can dam* well bet there are people in this country who must choose between buying food or medicine every month...cat food anyone?
****************************************************************
U.S. Hunger & Poverty Statistics
Hunger & Poverty Statistics
Although related, food insecurity and poverty are not the same. Unemployment rather than poverty is a stronger predictor of food insecurity.
Povertyi
In 2010, 46.2 million people (15.1 percent) were in poverty.
In 2010, 9.2 million (11.7 percent) families were in poverty.
In 2010, 26.3 million (13.7 percent) of people ages 18-64 were in poverty.
In 2010, 16.4 million (22.0 percent) children under the age of 18 were in poverty.
In 2010, 3.5 million (9.0 percent) seniors 65 and older were in poverty.
The overall Poverty Rate according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure is 16.0%, as compared with the official poverty rate of 15.1%.ii
Under the Supplemental Poverty Measure, there are 49.1 million people living in poverty, 2.5 million more than are represented by the official poverty measure (46.2 million).iii
Food Insecurity and Very Low Food Security iv
In 2010, 48.8 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 32.6 million adults and 16.2 million children.
In 2010, 14.5 percent of households (17.2 million households) were food insecure.
In 2010, 5.4 percent of households (6.4 million households) experienced very low food security.
In 2010, households with children reported food insecurity at a significantly higher rate than those without children, 20.2 percent compared to 11.7 percent.
In 2010, households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children (20.2 percent), especially households with children headed by single women (35.1 percent) or single men (25.4 percent), Black non-Hispanic households (25.1 percent) and Hispanic households (26.2 percent).
In 2009, 8.0 percent of seniors living alone (925,000 households) were food insecure.
Food insecurity exists in every county in America, ranging from a low of 5 percent in Steele County, ND to a high of 38 percent in Wilcox County, AL.v
Nine states exhibited statistically significant higher household food insecurity rates than the U.S. national average 2008-2010: iv
United States 14.6%
Mississippi 19.4%
Texas 18.8%
Arkansas 18.6%
Alabama 17.3%
Georgia 16.9%
Ohio 16.4%
Florida 16.1%
California 15.9%
North Carolina 15.7%
Use of Emergency Food Assistance and Federal Food Assistance Programs vi
In 2010, 4.8 percent of all U.S. households (5.6 million households) accessed emergency food from a food pantry one or more times.2
In 2010, 59.2 percent of food-insecure households participated in at least one of the three major Federal food assistance programs –Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamp Program), The National School Lunch Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.
Feeding America provides emergency food assistance to an estimated 37 million low-income people annually, a 46 percent increase from 25 million since Hunger in America 2010.
Among members of Feeding America, 74 percent of pantries, 65 percent of kitchens, and 54 percent of shelters reported that there had been an increase since 2006 in the number of clients who come to their emergency food program sites.
World Hunger: A Vicious Cycle
Synopsis
Overview: Hunger is the feeling one experience with a lack of food, the “persistent gnawing condition resulting from a lack of adequate food intake, which prevents one form working of thinking correctly.” Starvation is the most severe case of the condition of hunger. Starvation and hunger, if not combated, lead certainly to malnutrition. Malnutrition is the condition resulting from a lack of life sustaining vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.
Up to one billion people worldwide consume less than the minimum critical daily caloric intake needed to avoid hunger.
Hunger is most severe in the poorest parts of the world. Africa, India, Pakistan and Indonesia have the largest percentage of hungry people of all the countries in the world.
In Africa in particular, hunger and disease are a vicious cycle. Hunger, along with many other effects causes the immune system to weaken, making the body more susceptible to other diseases. These diseases, including AIDS, kill the older generation of people, the ‘bread winners’ and those who work in the fields to grow the food. When those people die, only the younger generations of children are left to fend for themselves and because they lack the care of a parent or adult, they are unable to sustain themselves with sufficient food intake. Also, because the infant mortality rate in third world countries is so high, families have large numbers of children to increase the chance that some will survive. By doing this, however, there are more mouths to feed and subsequently more hungry people in the world. Furthermore, malnutrition slows the intellectual development of children and young adults, and therefore, the problems of hunger and disease in third world countries cannot be solved internally but need outside influence and aid. The UN and other world hunger organizations offer significant economic and medical aid to these countries to help stamp out hunger.
Hunger is not a problem because the world food production is not enough to feed all of the people in the world; it is a problem because the food is not distributed equally among all of the countries and people in the world. Third world countries that have a great percentage of the population starving do not have the resources to obtain or grow food. These countries also have a lower standard of living than second of first world countries, as well as a non-existent economic infrastructure, or it one does exist, it is unstable. These factors also have an impact on a country’s technological capabilities. See hunger map for world starvation figures and estimates.
If all the food in the world were divided equally among all the people in the world, each person would get three times the minimum amount needed to survive. If there was a feasible way to accomplish this enormous task, the solution to world hunger would be found. Until then, charities and donations must aid the organizational fight against world hunger.
Statistics:
Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger.
Every year 15 million children die of hunger.
One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of five.
Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion total, live on less than US$1 per day.
One out of every eight children under twelve in the US goes to bed hungry every night.
Half of all children under age five in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
To satisfy the world’s sanitation and food requirements would only cost US$13 billion – what the people of the United States and the European Union spend of perfume each year.
Some 800 million people in the world suffer form hunger and malnutrition, about 1000 times as many as those who actually die form it each year.
The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world’s hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%5 and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world.
|
Pages: 
