Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) – “Hunger and poverty affect far too many Americans. Five things you should know about hunger and poverty are:

• One in six Americans struggled with hunger in 2012. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), more than 48.9 million Americans lived in households struggling against hunger in 2012. Of them, 15.8 million are children (21.6 percent of all children). Previously, in 2011, 50.1 million Americans were in food insecure households. The number of people living in households with very low food security – the worst off households – increased slightly, rising from 16.8 million in 2011 to 17.1 million in 2012.
• The overall rate of food insecurity has remained virtually unchanged since 2008. Essentially food insecurity spiked at the beginning of the recession, and has stayed elevated ever since. From 2003 to 2007, the annual number of people in food insecure households was in a range of 35.1 million to 38.2 million people. From 2008 to 2012, the range has been 48.8 million to 50.2 million people.
• More than one in seven people lived in poverty in 2011. The Census Bureau reported that in 2011, 46.2 million people (15 percent) lived in poverty in 2011, a rate unchanged from the 2010 poverty rate.”
• See also WSJ.com – Food Stamp Enrollment by State, June 2013.