In Pennsylvania, between 2019-2021:
- Food insecurity in Pennsylvania averaged 9.2%.
- Pennsylvania’s food insecurity rate was 12% 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 10.0%.
- But using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (which does include safety-net and tax-support income), the poverty rate falls to 7.6%. In other words, these programs reduced the poverty rate in Pennsylvania by 24% and the number of people living in poverty by 310,000.
- SNAP, alone, lifted 330,000 people above the poverty line in Pennsylvania, including 129,000 children, per year between 2013 and 2017, on average.
