Economic Causes of Hunger

• Unskilled job seekers have few options to get jobs. In a recent job search, the choices range from waiter, ($4. 90 an hour) to dishwasher ($5.00 an hour) to bartender ($6.00 an hour) to bouncer ($5.00 an hour).
• The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world.
• Poverty is the main cause of hunger. Poor people often lack access to land to grow food or inadequate income to buy food. Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than$1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people.
• The wealthiest countries, which contain one quarter of the world's population, consume three-fourths of the resources produced worldwide.
• Poverty is becoming more prevalent among young people. Between1979 and 1995, the number of children under three living in poverty in the United states grew from 1.7 million to 2.8 million, from 18 percent to 24 percent--a 33 percent increase.
• Young children are more likely to be poor than any other age group, and that disparity is growing. The poverty rate for children under age three was well over double the rate for adults or the elderly in 1995.
• The problem of young child poverty extends far beyond the stereotypical image of the poor minority child in an urban setting. The fact that nearly half of all young children live in poverty or near poverty demonstrates that young child poverty is a mainstream problem, affecting children from all racial and ethnic backgrounds, from all types of residential areas, and from all regions of the United States.
• The rate of poverty for children under age three living in suburban areas grew by 61 percent between the late 1970s and early 1990s, whereas the rates of poverty for children in the same age group in urban and rural areas rose by 37 and 47 percent respectively. The poverty rate for children under age three has grown twice as fast among whites as among blacks. Although the incidence of young child poverty among whites is relatively low (15 percent) compared to blacks (52 percent), the rate of white children living under age three in poverty grew twice as fast as among blacks (36 percent versus 17 percent) between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. The rate of poverty among Hispanic children under age three is high (44 percent) and increasing more rapidly than among other racial and ethnic groups. It has risen by 48 percent since the late 1970s.
• Children make up almost half of the population living below the Federal Poverty Line. More than 21 Percent of U.S. children under age 18, and 25 percent of children under age 6, are poor. Sixty-four percent of children under 6, who live in female-headed, single parent families, are poor.

Some Rhode Island Poverty Facts

• Nearly a third of public school children in Rhode Island were living in or near poverty last year, which is up 23%.
• Rhode Islands
• Rhode Island's childhood poverty crisis, and its dire consequence of hunger, calls for unprecedented, bipartisan response by all in power to change it. The proposed "childhood poverty summit" involving our states top political, corporate, religious, government and community leaders is a good idea. This idea would get the leaders focused on comprehensive efforts to put in place specific public and private initiatives to turn around the child poverty trend.
• According to Kid's Count, there are about 35,000 Rhode Island children eligible for food stamps who are not receiving benefits.
• Beyond food, the long-term income and employment needs of the mothers and fathers of these poor children must be addressed, if hunger and poverty are to be conquered for these families once and for all.
• During the last quarter of 1998, the Rhode Island Community Food Bank distributed a monthly average of 177,440 meals to 42,442 people, nearly half of whom re under eight-teen years old.
• Hungry children do not have the nutritional energy to learn, and their hungry parents lack the health and energy to compete in the job market or fully benefit from job training and education, which leads to poverty.