Rising Food Costs Hit Low-Income Families Hard
Friday, August 29th, 2008
By Wendy Pollack, Director, Women’s Law & Policy Project
The combination of a weak economy and the inflation of food prices has taken its toll on all households, but low-income households have been particularly hard-hit. As the national unemployment rate rose to 5.7 percent in July, the number of people receiving food stamp benefits hit a record high of over 28 million. The Illinois unemployment rate in July stood at 7.3 percent. Recent flooding has only compounded the difficulties for residents of the affected Illinois counties. Illinois is experiencing record numbers of food stamp recipients as well. In April the number of people receiving food stamps was almost 1.3 million. (more…)
Subscribe to our RSS Feed