About Hunger

Fact Sheet

In the United States:

Smiling Child with Sandwich

  • In 2008, one in seven households (14.6%) in the US were food insecure - over 49 million people. This means they did not have access to enough food to meet their basic needs.1
  • This includes almost 17 million children.
  • In 2005, nearly one in five US children lived in homes earning at or below the Federal poverty level (17.2%).2
  • The US has the highest wage inequality, wealth disparity, poverty rate and child poverty rate of any industrialized nation.3

In New Jersey:

  • The very high cost of living makes it difficult for low-income people to make ends meet. While the Federal poverty level for a family of four has become $20,650 in 2007, a recent study showed that such a family needs over $40,000 to meet its most basic needs in New Jersey.4
  • Low wages and high cost of living forces one in every five households in New Jersey to struggle to live on an income below the Self-Sufficiency Standard, that is, inadequate to meet basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, health care, child care and transportation to work.5
  • 85% of these households have at least one person working (non-elderly, non-disabled households).4
  • 11.8% of children under 18 (over 1 million children) live below the Federal poverty line.2
  • One out of every three people receiving emergency food are children.6

In Monmouth & Ocean Counties:

Elderly Woman

  • We live in one of the most expensive areas of the country, especially in terms of housing costs. A minimum wage worker in Monmouth or Ocean County would have to work 18 hours a day 7 days a week to afford an average two bedroom rental.4
  • The gap between the rich and the poor is increasing. While personal income increased among the rich, so did poverty among the poorer segments of the population in our two counties, rising from 5% to 6.3% in Monmouth County and from 6.0 – 7.0% in Ocean County in the period 1990-2000.7
  • Poverty rates among children increased significantly in the last decade: from 6.5% to 9.9% in Monmouth County and from 8.8% to 13.3% in Ocean County.7
  • The FoodBank served 51,000 children with emergency food in 2009, compared with “only” almost 19,000 in 2005.6
  • Of all households receiving emergency food in Monmouth and Ocean Counties, almost half (45%) of households with children experienced hunger during the course of the year.6
  1. Food Research and Action Council (FRAC), http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html.
  2. US Census Bureau, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates Program. County estimates for all ages in Poverty for New Jersey
  3. State of Working America, Economic Policy Institute, 2006/7.
  4. The Real Cost of Living in 2005: The Self-Sufficiency Standard in NJ. Legal Services of NJ, Poverty Research Institute
  5. Pearce, DM. (June, 2008) Not Enough to Live On, Characteristics of Households Below the Real cost of Living in NJ, Legal Services of NJ: Poverty Research Institute
  6. Hunger in America 2010, New Jersey and Monmouth and Ocean County Reports. Feeding America, Princeton: Mathematica Policy Institute