With less aid, hunger rate grows across North Carolina

MIXED METAPHORS

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 11.6% of North Carolina residents – or 1.2 million people – were food insecure from 2020-22.

Hunger is growing across North Carolina.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 11.6% of North Carolinians – or 1.2 million people – were food insecure from 2020-22. Among the hungry are 16.4% of children in the state (373,925), 8.6% of employed adults (426,022), and 7.3% of senior adults (193,061).  

Hunger Free America, a New York-based nonprofit that advocates for food self-sufficiency, attributes the surge to expiration of the expanded Child Tax Credit and universal school meals.

As federal benefit increases expire or are curtailed as prices for essentials like food, rent, healthcare, and fuel rise, more people are going hungry.

“Our report demonstrates child and adult hunger are serious problems in rural, urban, and suburban areas of all 50 states,” said Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, which compiled USDA data for a study on hunger across the nation. “This report should be a jarring wake up call for federal, state, and local leaders.”

According to Hunger Free America’s analysis of nonparticipation rates for food benefit programs, 31% of North Carolina residents who were eligible for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, didn’t receive benefits in 2018. The Women’s Infants and Children, or WIC, program nonparticipation rate was 38% in 2021 and school breakfast nonparticipation was 42% during the 2021-22 academic year.

U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, a Charlotte Democrat who hosts a quarterly hunger initiative meeting on food and agriculture policy issues, has advocated for ending what she calls a “chronic crisis of hunger.”

“Both the end of the year and the holiday season prompt us to consider the blessings that we have to be grateful for – not least given how central food is to celebrating during this holiday season,” Adams said during the Dec. 18 meeting. “But it also casts into clear focus how fair access to food in this country and, indeed, in the district, has become a privilege, and that is shameful.”

Other findings from the report:

•15.8% of children in the U.S. lived in food insecure households from 2020-22 with Delaware (21.4%), Nebraska (21.0%), Texas (20.7%), Georgia (20.0%), Kentucky (19.7%), and Louisiana (19.7%) the most insecure.

• 9.1% of employed adults in the U.S. lived in food insecure households. South Carolina and Louisiana, at 12.5%, had the third-highest rate of food insecurity among that demographic, exceeded by only Arkansas (13.7%) and Texas (13.4%).

• 7.6% of Americans 60 years of age and older, were food insecure. Louisiana had the highest rate at 13.9%, followed by Mississippi (12.7%), Washington, D.C., (12.6%), West Virginia (11.0%), and Oklahoma (10.4%).

• The states with the lowest rates of insecurity were New Hampshire (6.1%), Minnesota (7.3%), Vermont (7.7%), Colorado (8.4%), and North Dakota (8.6%).

“Effective federal public policies over the previous few years were spectacularly successful in stemming U.S. hunger, but as many of those policies have been reversed, hunger has again soared,” Berg said. “At exactly the moment when so many Americans are in desperate need of relief, many of the federally funded benefits increases, such as the Child Tax Credit and universal school meals, have expired, due mostly to opposition from conservatives in Congress.

“Just as no one should be surprised if drought increases when water is taken away, no one should be shocked that when the government takes away food, as well as money to buy food, hunger rises. Our political leaders must act to raise wages and provide a strong safety net, so we can finally end U.S. hunger and ensure that all Americans have access to adequate, healthy food.”  

The report includes detailed public policy recommendations at the federal level, including passage of the HOPE Act of 2021, reauthorization of the Child Tax Credit, which raised millions of families out of poverty, and immediately fully funding the WIC program for pregnant women, infants, and children under five, including maintaining increased allotments for fruit and vegetable purchases.

Adams has stressed the need to fund federal programs like SNAP and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC instead of cutting their budgets. She has also pushed for farm bill proposals that address food insecurity.

“You can’t be healthy if you’re hungry,” she said.

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