Bread for the World Institute Director Asma Lateef quoted in an article by NBC News about the steep rise in hunger in the United States do to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Among African American households with children, you’re seeing levels of 39 percent saying they’re food insecure,” said Asma Lateef, director of Bread for the World Institute. The number for Latino households with children reporting food insecurity was similar, at 37 percent, compared to 22 percent of white households.
“There are issues around historic systemic racism,” Lateef said, that make nonwhite populations more vulnerable to food insecurity. “They tend to work in jobs that pay less,” she said, including many of the service-sector jobs that have been hardest-hit by the COVID-19-related shutdowns.
“Historically, they've had higher rates of poverty and food insecurity. This crisis is no different,” Lateef said, although she added that anecdotal evidence suggests lower-income workers face greater difficulty securing unemployment insurance because they are more likely to lack access to a computer or high-speed internet.
Afghanistan would be considered likely to have high rates of hunger because at least two of the major causes of global hunger affect it—armed conflict and fragile governmental institutions.
Malnutrition is responsible for nearly half of all preventable deaths among children under 5. Every year, the world loses hundreds of thousands of young children and babies to hunger-related causes.
Bread for the World is calling on the Biden-Harris administration and Congress to build a better 1,000-Days infrastructure in the United States.
“As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in faith.” These words from Colossians 2:6 remind us of the faith that is active in love for our neighbors.
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The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is designed to respond to changes in need, making it well suited to respond to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bread for the World and its partners are asking Congress to provide $200 million for global nutrition.
In 2017, 11.8 percent of households in the U.S.—40 million people—were food-insecure, meaning that they were unsure at some point during the year about how they would provide for their next meal.