NEWS STORY: `Pennies a Day’ Could Sharply Cut Hunger in America

c. 2000 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ One in 10 U.S. households cannot afford food, and in the last 50 years more people around the world have died of hunger and poor sanitation than were killed in all the wars of the 20th century, according to a new report issued by Bread for the World […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ One in 10 U.S. households cannot afford food, and in the last 50 years more people around the world have died of hunger and poor sanitation than were killed in all the wars of the 20th century, according to a new report issued by Bread for the World Institute.

“In the United States, hunger does not manifest itself dramatically like famine and starvation,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “The face of hunger is much different in our country than it is overseas. But although it’s easier for us to ignore, it is still a widespread problem.”


For “just pennies a day,” the United States within two years could reduce by half the number of people in the nation suffering from hunger, and could eliminate hunger worldwide within 20 years, the report said. The United States is the only industrialized nation with a widespread hunger problem, it said. Hunger affects about 31 million people in the United States, according to the report.

And though in 1998 the nation’s unemployment rate hovered at a very low 4.5 percent and inflation remained at 1.9 percent, nearly one in five children and one in 10 adults suffered from hunger or were at risk of periodic hunger, the report said.

“As much as we’d like to think that ours is a generous society, the fact is that the richest country in the world does less than any other developed nation to combat pervasive hunger,” Beckmann said.

If the United States committed $5 billion a year to the fight to end hunger, the number of people suffering from hunger in the nation could be slashed to about 16 million, the report maintained. To end hunger worldwide, the U.S. government would need to contribute “less than one-third of 1 percent” of the federal budget each year.

“The benefits of ending global hunger are so huge that any rational person has to wonder why we have not done it already,” said Fawzi Al-Sultan, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development,one of the report’s authors. “Death, especially infant mortality, and disease rates would fall. Children would be healthier, happier and more able to learn. Productivity would rise as workers no longer had to work on empty stomachs.”

The report called upon the U.S. Congress to take steps to strengthen and improve programs such as the Food Stamp Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

Noting that the food stamp program aids about 20 million people _ and is the “first line of defense against hunger” _ the report urged Congress to pass the Hunger Relief Act, which would expand the number of people eligible to receive food stamps.


The report also called for a $1 increase in the minimum wage over the next two years.

“The Hunger Relief Act would extend food stamps to more hungry people, and a $1 increase in the minimum wage would put food on the table of a low-income family for six months,” said Beckmann. “… Churches and charities can’t do it all. Our government must do its part. Congress needs to pass the Hunger Relief Act and raise the minimum wage.”

Beckmann called the persistence of hunger “the 20th century’s greatest moral blind spot.”

“Although people are hungry because they are poor and political systems do not function properly, because of wars or because people belong to oppressed ethnic and racial groups, we do not have to end all these problems to end hunger,” he said.

DEA END DANCY

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