Record Need for Food Aid Despite U.S. Prosperity

Elizabeth Mehren / LA Times 18dec00

In a season that finds many Americans swimming in holiday excess, food banks around the United States have reported record requests for assistance. Much of the demand for food comes from people with jobs, and most from families with children.

So loud was the cry for Thanksgiving meals that some shelters ran out of turkeys to give away.

"It was incredible," said Nancy Carrington of the Connecticut Food Bank. Her group distributed 21,000 birds -- up from 17,000 the previous Thanksgiving

--and Carrington said Christmas portends a repeat performance. "Unfortunately, " she said, "in the last five years, the demand for food has been going up every single year."

"Our charities tell us it's mostly the increase in the working poor, people working two or three jobs and yet they still don't have enough to pay rent and food," said Daren Hoffman, spokesman at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.

Amid the nation's unprecedented prosperity, an estimated 31 million Americans live in households that suffer from hunger.

The problem earns modest public attention during the holidays, when coins drop freely into charity kettles, said J. Larry Brown, head of the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. But he said hunger looms year-round as a hidden crisis that vexes experts.

Brown has formed a coalition of academics and celebrities intent on halting hunger in the United States in the next five years.

Data released last week by the U.S. Conference of Mayors show that most people seeking food assistance are employed. Brown's research indicates that from 1998 to 1999, the number of requests for emergency food aid increased an average of 18 percent nationwide -- with nearly 60 percent coming from families with children.

Federal free breakfast programs reach only 41 percent of eligible low- income children, Brown said. Only 22 percent of eligible children take part in the federal summer food program.

Typically, said Brown, about 68 percent to 72 percent of eligible families receive food stamps. But with welfare reform changes, that figure has dropped to about 60 percent. The percentage of poor children whose families receive food stamps fell from 94 percent in 1994 to 75 percent in 1998, he said.