The season of feasting has begun. But even as some pore through cookbooks in search of the perfect stuffing, nearly one in eight residents of Massachusetts worry that the food in the cupboard won’t last until the end of the month.
The problem is growing and it’s not just in the poorest urban neighborhoods. Hunger exists in every community, including Newton.
According to Tracie Longman, the Newton Food Pantry regularly serves over 450 households in Newton, providing food to over 600 people a month. That represents an increase of approximately 25 percent over two years ago. Additional clients are served by the two other food pantries in Newton — the Arabic Baptist Church Food Pantry and the Centre Street Food Pantry.
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau as reported by Boston’s Project Bread reveals that 11.9 percent of the people in the Commonwealth experienced food insecurity in 2011 – an increase of 43 percent since 2008.
This is why the Newton TAB and Wicked Local Newton have made hunger the focus of our annual Gifts of Hope campaign for this year.
We invite you to contribute to Newton’s three local food pantries at more than a dozen dropoff sites around the city. (See the “How to help the hungry in Newton” tab on the right for more information.)
Project Bread defines food insecurity as having to lower the quantity or quality of food purchased because of a lack of money. More than a third of the people suffering food insecurity had to skip meals and go hungry in 2011.
While federal programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program can help fill the pantry, 43 percent of those at risk of hunger earn too much money to qualify for benefits, according to the Greater Boston Food Bank’s 2010 study of hunger in eastern Massachusetts.
The GBFB cites several reasons why working families in Massachusetts can find it difficult to make ends meet. High housing and fuel costs are compounded by long, cold winters and the cost of heating. More than 40 percent of those relying on the food bank said they had to choose between paying for food or heat. Moreover, food prices in Massachusetts are among the highest in the country, because the state is at the end of the food supply chain that moves from west to east.
Project Bread’s report also blamed the growing income gap. Low wage earners earned 41 cents to the dollar earned by a high wager earner in 1984, but it 2011, it had shrunk to 32 cents. The disparity makes it harder for people at the bottom to keep up and to bounce back after hard times.
Both agencies reported that their clients spanned all ages, ethnicities and races. Eighteen percent of the hungry were children, and a third of the households served had at least one child under age 18.