“It’s vital to understand that we were facing a hunger and food insecurity epidemic before the pandemic. In 2019, when the economy was theoretically in great shape, tens of millions of Americans couldn’t afford enough food primarily because they did not earn enough to meet their basic expenses. Even in 2019, more than 10 million American children lived in homes that couldn’t afford enough food.By December 2020, we had a new methodology from the federal government that measured how much food people had on the weekly level and that spiked to 30 million Americans in one week that didn’t have enough food…that was reduced substantially over the last few months because of policies that put people back to work and policies that put cash in their pocket and food in their grocery carts. But still in April, about 17 million American still can’t afford enough food and they are still missing meals so we are still in the midst of a very serious hunger crisis,” said PPI Senior Fellow Joel Berg in the interview.
