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Federal Food Program Fails to Reach Millions Even as Child Hunger Surges in U.S.

HeadlineMay 27, 2020

As the official U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is set to top 100,000 this week, rates of child hunger are soaring across the United States. Despite the surge, a federal program to feed schoolchildren who’ve been cut off from school meals during the pandemic has reached only a small fraction of the 30 million students it was intended to help. The New York Times reports only 15% of eligible children have received benefits under the Pandemic EBT program, even though a fifth of U.S. mothers in a recent survey reported their children were not getting enough to eat.

Meanwhile, the Census Bureau reports more than a third of all U.S. adults are showing signs of clinical anxiety or depression during the pandemic. That figure is about double the rate found in a survey in 2014.

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