In North Carolina, between 2019-2021:
- Food insecurity in North Carolina averaged 10.90%.
- North Carolina’s food insecurity rate was 4% higher 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 12.8%.
- But using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (which does include safety-net and tax-support income), the poverty rate falls to 9.9%. In other words, these programs reduced the poverty rate in North Carolina by 23% and the number of people living in poverty by 304,000.
- SNAP, alone, lifted 297,000 people above the poverty line in North Carolina, including 130,000 children, per year between 2013 and 2017, on average.
