A Profile of Food and Nutrition Programs Across the States
2006_SOS_Report.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Food stamps are a critical support for millions of low-income people but should be reaching millions more.
Individuals and families -- both unemployed people and low-income working people and their families -- need a set of key public supports: Medicaid and SCHIP health insurance, child care help, the benefits of the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit, and nutrition programs like food stamps, WIC, school meals and others.
The federal government's child nutrition programs -- School Lunch, School Breakfast, Summer Food, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, and WIC --provide healthy and nutritious food to pregnant women, infants and toddlers in their homes, to preschoolers in child care, to children living in shelters, and to school-aged children during the school day, in the morning before school, in afterschool programs, and over holidays and vacations.
For many children these programs provide more than half of the nutrition they receive each weekday.
The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 improved the Summer Food Service Program by expanding this pilot and making it permanent.
The state data pages also list each state's summer nutrition participation rate --children in summer nutrition as a percent of children receiving free or reduced price lunch during the school year -- and the state's rank on this measure.
The Food Research and Action Center gratefully acknowledges the following funders whose major support in 2005-2006 has helped to make possible our work on expanding and improving nutrition programs.
The Food Research and Action Center is the leading national organization working for more effective public and private policies to eradicate domestic hunger and under-nutrition.
