1 out of 7 Americans receiving food assistance at an average of $133 per person.

The U.S. government is now spending roughly $5.6 billion per month on food assistance helping out 41,836,000 Americans. How bad is it for the lower economic strata of families in our economy? In January of 2007 we had 26,000,000 Americans on food assistance. The economic crisis has added 15,800,000 Americans onto the food assistance program now known as SNAP. These numbers are incredible and demonstrate how deep the recession has gotten. Even though on paper the recession ended in the summer of 2009 these numbers show a very different economic climate. Where did these 15 million people come from? Many have fallen off the middle class treadmill and have been sucked into the ever growing invisible class of people in the U.S. (more)