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.