Betty on the News: Half of U.S. Kids Will Receive Food Stamps

A new study indicates that nearly half of all American children will be on food stamps at some point before they're 20 years old.

-Margeaux Baulch Klein

Nearly half of all kids in the U.S., including 90 percent of black children, will have to depend on food stamps at some point in their childhood, claims a sad new report released on Monday from the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. And the recession could make those numbers even worse.

Researchers studied data from a annual survey of 4,800 families between the years of 1968 to 1997, which included the rough 1980s recession, and found that about 49 percent of children were on food stamps at some point before they turned twenty.

"The current recession is likely to generate for children in the United States the greatest level of material deprivation that we will see in our professional lifetimes," Dr. Paul Wise, a Stanford pediatrician, wrote.

Doctors say that the numbers are worrisome because children on food stamps are at greater risk for malnutrition and other illnesses associated with poverty. (Huffington Post)

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