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本帖最後由 黃老虎搶親 於 2009-11-17 03:00 編輯
無論是民主也好,共產主義也好,在美麗繁華的背後,貧富懸殊的問題一樣存在。
希望這新聞能給那些以為美國就是天堂的人一個當頭棒喝!!!
Washington Post Staff Writer
Amy Goldstein
Monday, November 16, 2009; 12:04 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/16/AR2009111601598.html?wpisrc=newsletter
Washington Post
More Americans going hungry
The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a government report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.
In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children -- more than one in five across the United States -- were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million children the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.
Among people of of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.
Taken together, the findings provide the latest glimpse into the toll that the weak economy has taken on the well-being of the nation's residents. The findings are from a snapshot of food in America that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued every year since 1995, based on Census Bureau surveys. It documents both Americans who are scrounging for adequate food -- people living with some amount of "food insecurity" in the lexicon of experts -- and those whose food shortages are so severe that they are hungry.
The report released Monday is the first produced during the tenure of President Obama, who pledged during his campaign for the White House last year to eliminate hunger among children by 2015, a goal that no previous president has set. The administration has not produced a full-fledged plan to meet that objective, but White House and Agriculture officials said in recent interviews that they are developing policies. Among the first is a decision to use $85 million freed up by Congress as part of a recent appropriations bill to experiment with ways to get food to more children during the summer, when subsidzed school breakfasts and lunches are unavailable. The government's next significant forum for debating how to improve access to food is scheduled for the coming year, when Congress is to renew the country's main law covering food and nutrition for children. Meantime, the White House has been convening frequent meetings with officials from several federal departments -- including Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, in addition to Agriculture -- that deal with youngsters' well-being.
The report suggests that the main federal programs intended to help people struggling to get adequate food are only partly fulfilling their purpose. Slightly more than half the people surveyed who reported they had food shortages said that they had, in the previous month, participated in one of the government's main anti-hunger and nutrition programs: food stamps, subsidized school lunches or WIC, the nutrition program for women with babies or young children.
Food shortages, the report shows, are particularly pronounced among women raising children alone. Last year, more than one in three single mothers reported that they struggled for food and more than one in seven said someone in their home had been hungry -- far eclipsing the food problem in any other kind of household. The report also found that people who are black or Hispanic were more than twice as likely as whites to report that food in their home was scarce. |
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