Domestic Hunger Information
Suggested Reading List
by Frances Moore Lappe
True Vine: A Young Black Man’s Journey of Faith, Hope and Clarity , by John W. Fountain, Perseus Books Group, 2003. True story of an African-American man who broke free from the cycle of poverty to become an award winning reporter for the New York Times.
Diet for a Dead Planet: How the Food Industry Is Killing Us, by Christopher D. Cook, New Press, 2004. Examines industrial agriculture’s threat to the future of food and the environment.
Are We On Track to End Hunger? Hunger Report 2004, Bread for the World Institute, 2004. Cutting-edge information and statistics on status of world hunger.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in Americaby Barbara Ehrenreich
Begging for Change: The Dollars and Sense of Making Nonprofits Responsive, Efficient, and Rewarding for All by Robert Egger
Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures by Lester R. Brown
Research & Resources:
State-Level Predictors of Food Insecurity and Hunger Among Households With Children
USDA Economic Research Service
This report examines interstate variation in household food security. Using hierarchical modeling, we identify several contextual dimensions that appear linked to household food security: the availability and accessibility of Federal nutrition assistance programs, policies affecting economic well-being of low-income families, and States' economic and social characteristics. These dimensions comprise what we refer to as the State food security infrastructure. We find that a strong food security infrastructure particularly benefits families that are economically vulnerable yet have incomes above the poverty line. Almost all of the observed interstate differences in food security can be explained by cross-State differences in demographic and contextual characteristics.
Released Tuesday, October 18, 2005
See http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/CCR13/
Household Food Security in the United States, 2004
By Mark Nord, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson
Economic Research Report No. (ERR11) 65 pp, October 2005
Eighty-eight percent of American households were food secure throughout the entire year in 2004, meaning that they had access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The remaining households were food insecure at least some time during that year. The prevalence of food insecurity rose from 11.2 percent of households in 2003 to 11.9 percent in 2004 and the prevalence of food insecurity with hunger rose from 3.5 percent to 3.9 percent. This report, based on data from the December 2004 food security survey, provides the most recent statistics on the food security of U.S. households, as well as on how much they spent for food and the extent to which food-insecure households participated in Federal and community food assistance programs. Survey responses indicate that the typical food-secure household in the U.S. spent 31 percent more on food than the typical food-insecure household of the same size and household composition. Just over one-half of all food-insecure households participated in one or more of the three largest Federal food assistance programs during the month prior to the survey. About 20 percent of food-insecure households—3.5 percent of all U.S. households—obtained emergency food from a food pantry at some time during the year.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err11/
Hunger in America, 2006 The America's Second Harvest Network produced " Hunger in America 2006," a comprehensive profile of the incidence and nature of hunger and food insecurity in the U.S. This study provides extensive demographic profiles of emergency food clients at charitable feeding agencies and comprehensive information on the nature and efficacy of local agencies in meeting the food security needs of clients. The study is the largest of its kind. More than 52,000 individuals agreed to share their personal stories through face-to-face interviews at charitable emergency hunger-relief agencies like pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters. Nearly 31,000 local emergency hunger-relief agencies completed survey questionnaires about their efforts to serve millions of hungry Americans. The A2H system served an estimated 25 million different people annually, including 9 million children and 3 million seniors. Visit http://www.hungerinamerica.org/ for more information about Hunger in America, 2006, including findings from the study and local statistics about hunger in your community. Related Websites:
America’s Second Harvest – the Nation’s Food Bank Network