Solutions

Lobby group

• Thirty-three million people-including 13 million children-live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger. This represents one in ten households in the United States (10 percent). ₁

• 3.1 percent of U.S. households experience hunger: they frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day. Nearly 8.5 million people, including 2.9 million children, live in these homes. ₁

• 7.3 percent of U.S. households are at risk of hunger: they have lower quality diets or must resort to seeking emergency food because they cannot always afford the food they need. 24.7 million people, including 9.9 million children, live in these homes. ₁

• Preschool and school-aged children who experience severe hunger have higher levels of chronic illness, anxiety  and depression, and behavior problems than children with no hunger, according to a recent study. ₂

Source material:

1. ERS Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Report No. (FANRR) 21, United States Department of Agriculture, March 2002.

2. Pediatrics, Vol. 110 No. 4, October 2002

International Facts on Hunger and Poverty

• More than 840 million people in the world are malnourished-799 million of them are from the developing world. More than 153 million of them are under the age of 5. ₁

• 6 million children under the age of 5 die every year as a result of hunger. 1

• Of the 6.2 billion people in today's world, 1.2 billion live on less than $1 per day. 2

• The proportion of people living on less than $1 a day has fallen from 29 percent to 23 percent in the past 10 years, although that masks significant regional differences. ₃

• The amount of money that the richest 1 percent of the world's people make each year equals what the poorest 57 percent make. ₂

• The richest 5 percent of the world's people have incomes 114 times that of the poorest 5 percent. 2

• Malnutrition can severely affect a child's intellectual development. Children who have stunted growth due to malnutrition score significantly lower on math and language achievement tests than do well-nourished children. ₄

• Virtually every country in the world has the potential of growing sufficient food on a sustainable basis. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has set the minimum requirement for caloric intake per person per day at 2,350. Worldwide, there are 2,805 calories available per person per day ₅.

• Fifty-four countries fall below that requirement; they do not produce enough food to feed their populations, nor can they afford to import the necessary commodities to make up the gap. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. ₆

Health

• In developing countries, 91 children out of 1,000 die before their fifth birthday. By comparison, in the United States eight children in 1,000 will die before turning five years old. 7

• Each day in the developing world, more than 30,000 children die from mostly preventable and treatable causes such as diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, measles or malaria. These diseases are far more deadly to children who are stunted or underweight. _2,5

• 12 million people die each year from lack of water, including 3 million children from waterborne disease: 1.1 billion lack access to clean water; 2.4 billion live without decent sanitation; and 4 billion without wastewater disposal. ₈

• By the end of 2005, some 32 million people had died from AIDS, which has caused 13 million children to lose either their mother or both parents. _{2, 10}

• 40 million people are living with AIDS- 90 percent of them in developing countries and 75 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa: 2.9 million are under the age of 14. ₂

Source material:

1. State of Food Insecurity in the World 2005. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

2. Human Development Report 2005, Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World, United Nations Development Program.

3. "Secretary-General Warns World Falling Short of Millennium Summit Commitments," Press Release from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, October 1, 2006.

4. State of the World's Children 2006. UNICEF.

5. TKOH Foundation.

6. FAO database; numbers for the year 2006.

7. Mapping of the Food Supply Gap 2006. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

8. State of the World's Children 2006: Goal 6. UNICEF.

9. Statements of World Bank Vice President of Environment and Socially Sustainable Development Network in Op-Ed piece

10. Carter Center for Human Rights.

Approximately four million low-income children under the age of 12 experience hunger each year and an additional 9.6 million children are at risk of hunger. (Source: Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project 1995)

In 1997, nearly 7 million families with children depend on food stamps. They will lose an average of $435 due to the new welfare law's cuts. 52% of food stamp recipients are children. Two-thirds of food stamp benefit reduction will affect families with children. (Source: Children's Defense Fund 2003)

In 1996, Catholic Charities food banks served 2.7 million people while soup kitchens fed over one million. (Source: Vital Signs 2005)

Federal Programs to combat hunger and food insecurity reach only one third of needy older adults. (Source: American Dietetic Association 2005)

"Every day, 25% of our food supply is wasted." (Source: President Clinton, in remarks to D.C. Central Kitchen Trainees and Volunteers, Washington, D.C., Dec. 21, 2003)

Almost 100 billion pounds of safe, edible food – meat and poultry, fruit and vegetables, milk and eggs – are thrown away every year by retailers, restaurants, and farmers while twenty-five million Americans are hungry, including 12 million children. (Source: USDA 2004)

Ninety-seven percent of food stamp benefits go to households with gross incomes equal to or below the poverty line, and over 80 percent go to households with children. (Source: Food Research and Action Center 2006)

13,859,000 million children were enrolled in the food stamp program in 2006.(Source: Children's Defense Fund 1006)

In 1997, 26.1 million children participated in the National School Lunch Program and 14.6% received free or reduced meals daily. (Source: USDA 2005)

2.1 million children received meals in the summer food program in 2006.(Source: Children's Defense Fund 2006)

Sixty percent of hungry households have at least one household member employed, and almost half of the hungry households have at least one full-time employee. (Source: Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project 2005)

Almost 70 percent of households at risk of hunger have workers, and 57 percent of at risk households have at least one full-time worker. (Source: Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project 2006)

Officials in 96% of the responding U.S. cities expect requests for emergency food assistance to increase in 1999; 96% expect requests for emergency food from families with children to increase in 2004 (Source: U.S. Conference of Mayors, status report on Hunger and Homelessness in America's Cities, 2005)

On average, an estimated 18 percent of the requests for emergency food assistance have gone unmet. (Source: U.S. Conference of Mayors, status report on Hunger and Homelessness in America's Cities, 2006)

Seventy-five percent of29 cities surveyed reported that there are low-income neighborhoods in which the residents do not have reasonable access to local supermarkets. (Source: U.S. Conference of Mayors, status report on Hunger and Homelessness in America's Cities, 2006)

29% of U.S. children under the age of 12 – 13.6 million children – are hungry or are at risk of hunger daily. (Source: FRAC 2005)

In 2003, one in four older Americans were malnourished. (Source: survey of 750 doctors, nurses, and health care administrators who work with senior citizens, commissioned by Nutrition Screening Initiative, Milwaukee Journal, April 2004)

In 2005, six out of every ten people (62 percent) who went to Catholic Charities (the nation's largest private human service organization) needed food or shelter as compared to ten years earlier when only two out of every ten people (23 percent) sought those services. (Source: National survey conducted by Catholic Charities USA)

Under nutrition during any period during childhood can have detrimental effects on cognitive development and adult productivity. (Source: Center on Hunger, Poverty, and Nutrition, Tufts Univ. 2003)

26 million additional people could be fed, at U.S. levels of consumption, if the amount of edible food wasted in the United States each day were reduced by one-third. (Source: USDA, 2006)

Vocabulary
Arable - land where it is possible to grow food.
Drought - when there is no rain for a long time.
Famine - a severe shortage of food when large numbers of people do not get the food they need to stay healthy.

GNP per capita - the Gross National Product, converted to United States dollars, divided by the population (all residents 

except refugees not permanently settled in the country). GNP per capita is useful because it compensates for the differences in total population between countries.