By Rachel Goldfarb, originally published on Next New Deal
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Census Says 16m U.S. Children are Living on Food Stamps, Double the Number in 2007 (The Guardian)
One in five American children would go hungry without food stamps, writes Jana Kasperkevic, which makes continued Republican efforts to cut the program especially worrying.
A large part of Ryan’s argument rests on the premise that federal aid weakens the ability of people to stand on their own feet. Political discussions about public assistance programs in America frequently lead to heated partisan debates about whether poor Americans are living on the government’s largesse.But the census data released today defies a number of stereotypes about Americans who depend on public assistance.
For instance, it’s not just children with single parents who are at risk of going hungry. Even though the number of families with single mothers that depend on food stamps rose by 30% in the last seven years, the number of families with married parents who receive food stamps almost doubled, reaching 5.2 million. That’s compared to just 2.7 million in 2007.
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