posted on 2009-11-27 by JPerez
The estimate was startling, and made headlines around the country: Almost half of all U.S. kids will be on food stamps at some time during childhood.

How could it be true in the land of plenty, in the midst of an obesity epidemic, skeptics wondered.

Surprisingly, many statisticians and policy analysts say the projection seems about right. Where they differ, along ideological lines, is in interpreting what it all means.

Most would agree that people on food stamps aren't necessarily starving, and some may not be even close to it. It's also clear that people who need food stamps the most often don't get them.

Food stamps are a U.S. Department of Agriculture program administered by states, but the USDA's annual report on food stamp enrollment, released this week, said dozens of states failed to reach some of the country's most needy citizens in 2007.

Whether receiving food stamps means people are truly impoverished provokes more debate.

The eye-opening estimate on children is from an analysis published earlier this month in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The authors, sociologists from Cornell University and Washington University in St. Louis, based their projection on 30 years of national data. They said their results show U.S. kids face a substantial risk for experiencing poverty, which poses a serious threat to their health and well-being.

A USDA hunger report last week raised similar concerns, finding that more than one in seven American households lacked "food security" in 2008 _ the highest number since tracking began in 1995. That suggests almost 15 percent of households nationwide struggled to get enough to eat, versus about 11 percent in 2007. continue to source...