Who is going hungry in the U.S.?
Although most people think of hungry people and homeless people as the same, the problem of hunger reaches far beyond homelessness. While the thought of 35.5 million people being hungry or at the risk of hunger may be surprising, it is the faces of those 35.5 million individuals that would probably most shock you. The face of hunger is the older couple who has worked hard for their entire lives only to find their savings wiped out by unavoidable medical bills; or a single mother who has to choose whether the salary from her minimum wage job will go to buy food or pay rent; or a child who struggles to concentrate on his schoolwork because his family couldn’t afford dinner the night before. A December 2006 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors estimated that 48 percent of those requesting emergency food assistance were either children or their parents.
