Even Matt Damon and Beyonce Could Not Sell the True Child Hunger Statistic (One In A Thousand)

To understand the magnitude of childhood hunger, we need a snapshot of how many children are hungry on a given day.  According to a typical alarmist, sixteen million children “face hunger every day.”  That is a huge figure — more than one in five children — that suggests a massive failure of food stamps, free school lunches, and private charity.  After all this time and public and private expense, so many children remain hungry in a rich country like the United States! What a disgrace!

The U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes data from which one can calculate how many children are hungry on a given day. (Just as the Census Bureau asks where you live on the day of the census).  The conclusion for the number of hungry children is (extended drum roll): One tenths of one percent of children, or one per thousand. Even if we use the USDA’s liberal measure of hunger at least one incident over  twelve months, we get a child-hunger figure of one percent.

Such  low figures (one in a thousand or one in a hundred) will be ignored by the hunger lobby, food stamps expansionists, and the media because it suggests a problem that has been solved. (Discussion would then have to turn to childhood obesity, as it already has).

go to forbes.com