Maine: A Hunger and Poverty Snapshot

Topic: ·
1 MIN READ
Downloads:
Maine Fact Sheet

In Maine, between 2019-2021:

  • Food insecurity in Maine averaged 9.50%.
  • Maine’s food insecurity rate was 9% lower than the national average of 10.4%.
  • The official poverty rate (which does not account for income from safety-net and tax-support programs such as SNAP, EITC, and others) in the state averaged 9.2%.
  • But using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (which does include safety-net and tax-support income), the poverty rate falls to 5.4%. In other words, these programs reduced the poverty rate in Maine by 41% and the number of people living in poverty by 52,000.
  • SNAP, alone, lifted 43,000 people above the poverty line in Maine per year between 2013 and 2017, on average.

Related Resources