Poverty and Hunger in Philadelphia: Blog 1

In English, we are all participating in a project called You and the World. This is a project where the students all choose a topic that appears in the news, and share their findings with everyone. For my topic I chose Poverty and Hunger in Philadelphia. I chose this topic because this is one of the biggest problems in America today. People are living in the streets and are starving and sick and cannot get the right care. I see these people every day walking to school, and I think about how different my life would be in their shoes.

For starters, we should probably consider what hunger looks like. When most people think of hunger they think of Africa, or India or Vietnam. They think of the poor kids with the big eyes and the skin and bone bodies, or with the pale complexions. No one thinks about what could be happening in their backyard. In America hunger looks very different. Hunger is parents skipping meals so their kids can eat. Or a person eating one meal a day so they can pay for a roof over their head. Hunger can even look like obesity. This is because when people cannot afford food, they pay for cheap unhealthy fast food, because parents are so worried about their children not eating at all, that they will buy whatever they can afford. No one realizes just how bad hunger can be. 

Of the twenty five biggest cities in America, Philadelphia is the second worst when it comes to percentage in poverty, and average housing income. This is because Philadelphia is also one of the most expensive cities to live in. The only large city worse in these categories is Detroit. From 2010 to 2011, the poverty rate in Philadelphia jumped from 26.7% to 28.4%. In Philadelphia one in eight households are suffering from some kind of poverty. In America, fifty million people went hungry last year. The job market is also largely responsible for this. Since the people do not have jobs they cannot provide for themselves. Minimum wage jobs are not helping the situation. Of the Americans living in Poverty, 70% of the families have at least one member working some kind of job. To see some charts and graphs describing poverty in Philadelphia click here.

Hunger in Philadelphia is not just a lower class problem anymore. The bottom of the middle class is also being greatly affected by hunger, and if hunger and poverty continue to progress the way they have been, then soon more and more of the middle class will be suffering.

When you here about all of these statistics, you probably are thinking, “wow I didn’t know hunger was that bad”, or maybe “if something doesn’t get done soon, could hunger and poverty start to affect families like mine?”. Both of those thoughts are important steps in stopping hunger.

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