Child Hunger in the United States

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Child hunger has been prevalent in the United States for many years. As of 2012, over fifteen millions children live in food insecure households. For my paper I will examine Child Hunger as a social problem, the effects of the problem, solutions, and barriers that have hindered the solutions used for this problem.

Social Problem History
A considerable effort has been done in terms of defining the social issue of Child Hunger or hunger in general for policy purposes. Both private and public sectors, with the cooperation of the government agencies, privately funded advocate groups, and academic institutions have used the method to measure hunger by self-report of his or her own experience of suffering from hunger. (Lewit and Kerrebrock, 1997, Pg 129). According to Lewit and Kerrebrock (1997) poverty is defined as “an inadequate amount of food intake due to a lock of money or resources” (pg.129) or “The mental or physical condition that comes from not eating enough food due to insufficient economic, family, or community resources.” (pg.129). As it stands today, Hunger is now defined with the term “Food insecurity” which means families or individuals are unable to secure or afford nutritious safe food in order to have a healthy active lifestyle.
While there wasn’t much press during the Great Depression era concerning child hunger, there were a large influx of families who suffered from food insecurity because of the economic climate of the United States. Until the mid-1980s during a recession and a reduction of federally funded food programs, there was an increase in hunger in the United States by as much as twenty million people; most of whom were children.
Lewit and Kerrebrock’s (1997) study found the following: Between...

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When I think about human rights and Article 25, the right to an adequate standard of living. If a family or individual is living in poverty and as a consequence is suffering from hunger then that means their basic needs aren’t being met. The word adequate seems to stick out to me because of its meaning. “Good enough to meet the needs of the person.” This clearly is not happening for children and their families who are not only getting enough food, but not notoriously good food that can maintain a healthy diet.

In conclusion, Child hunger is prevalent in the United States. As of 2012, there are over sixteen million children suffering from Child Hunger in the US. While there are many solutions in order to solve this problem, it still persists. This issues needs to be continued to be looked at and dealt with our policy makers as they ultimately hold the key.

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