The Paradox of Hunger and Economic Prosperity in America

Abstract

Within a period of twenty years, America discovered that many of its citizens were hungry, acted to greatly reduce this problem through an array of federal programs, and, in the 1980s, learned that hunger has reappeared in epidemic proportions. The return of hunger to the U.S. is associated with economic and tax policies that have reallocated income distribution from poor and middle-income groups to the wealthy, and with a correspondiong failure to utilize the federal government to protect high-risk population groups from undernutrition associated with growing economic deprivation in the nation.