11/17/09 Stockholm, Sweden – According to UN officials roughly one billion people, or 1 in 6 worldwide, are wrestling with hunger. With the downturn in the economy the US, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, isn’t faring any better.
Data collected for 2008 shows that one out of every six Americans, for a total of 49 million people, “went hungry or had insufficient food at some point in 2008, the highest number since the government began tracking the problem in 1995.”
The report from the US Department of Agriculture surveyed 44,000 US households. It also found a 45 percent increase over 2007 in the number of people who “went hungry or did not eat regularly for a few days of each month over seven or eight months.”
Despite the ongoing bear market rally, the real economy is in turmoil. When the current asset bubble bursts the hardship Americans face could get much worse.
More details are available from USA Today in a wake up call about hunger in America.
Rocky Vega
Rocky Vega is publisher of Agora Financial International, where he advances the growth of Agora Financial publishing enterprises outside of the US. Previously, he was publisher of The Daily Reckoning, and founding publisher of both UrbanTurf and RFID Update -- which he ran from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico -- as well as associate publisher of FierceFinance. Rocky has an honors MS from the Stockholm School of Economics and an honors BA from Harvard University, where he served on the board of directors for Let’s Go Publications, Harvard Student Agencies, and The Harvard Advocate.
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only writer on here to not write anything himself. Just regurgitating other peoples news. I can get an RSS feeder too Rocky!
Dear Rocky,
I don’t know if I’d go by UN statistics, or any kind of “poll” – they are all suspect.
Obesity is a problem in America. If fewer meals are eaten by some, that might be better.
Thank you for publishing this short article. I live in Metro Detroit, and things here are getting worse and worse. President Obama may have won the Nobel Peace Prize, but when it comes to taking care of Americans, which is his top priority, he is an absolute and utter failure.