Congressional Districts in the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas' 21-County Service Territory
Households Receiving Food Stamps
According to the most recent Census data, 18.6 million households including 40.3 million people reported receiving food stamps. Most participants were children or older adults. While nearly 30 percent of participants had jobs, only 15 percent had income above the poverty line.
This map is based on 2010 American Community Survey 1-year estimates.
According to the most recent Census data, food stamps served approximately 8.9 million households with children, representing 49 percent of all food stamp households; 66 percent of those children were of school age. Almost half of all children living in the United States will receive food stamp assistance at some point before they turn 18, according to a study conducted by researchers from Cornell and Washington Universities.
This map is based on 2010 American Community Survey 1-year estimates.
Poverty generally describes economic hardship, but it also describes the official income thresholds the U.S. Census uses to estimate the number of people in poverty. Nearly one in six, or 46.2 million Americans are poor, the highest number in the 52 years the U.S. Census Bureau has been publishing data on it. The last decade marked the first on record where real median household income declined, reflecting the deep recession and economic pain affecting Americans across the country. Children are most likely to be poor followed by adults over age 65. Poverty disproportionately affects single women head of households, blacks, Hispanics, and foreign-born residents. Poverty is defined as an annual income of below $22,314 for a family of four ($1,860 a month, $429 a week, or $60 a day). Under the new poverty measure yet to be officially adopted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate is 16 percent compared with 15.2 percent under the current measure.
Texas's poverty rate is 17.9 percent representing 4.6 million people struggling to get by. Texas also has a higher proportion of workers paid at or below the legal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and has the highest rate of uninsured people in the nation at 24.6 percent.
This map is based on 2010 American Community Survey 1-year estimates.
Children represent a disproportionate share of the poor in America. Children represent 24 percent of the population yet they represent 36 percent of the poor population. In 2010, 16.4 million children were poor, 1.75 million of whom live in Texas - a 5 percent increase from 2009. Ten percent of Texas children live in extreme poverty. Texas ranks 9th worst among the states in child poverty and 17th in extreme poverty. Poverty is defined as an annual income of below $22,314 for a family of four ($1,860 a month, $429 a week, or $60 a day) and extreme poverty is living on half of that annual income.
According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, poverty can impede children’s ability to learn and contribute to social, emotional, and behavioral problems. Poverty also can contribute to poor health and mental health. Risks are greatest for children who experience poverty when they are young and/or experience deep and persistent poverty.
This map is based on 2010 American Community Survey 1-year estimates.
Food hardship is the inability to buy enough food for the household because of lack of money and is defined as answering "yes" to the question: "Have there been times in the past twelve months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?" According to the Food and Research Action Center (FRAC), "[Food hardship data] provides a unique, comprehensive and timely examination of the struggle that a very large number of American households, in every part of the country, are having with affording enough food.
This map is based on data released in the 2011 Food Hardship in America report.
Food insecurity is the condition of not having regular access to enough nutritious food for a healthy life. This means that nutritionally adequate and safe foods may not be readily available for purchase through supermarkets, restaurants or other food vendors and individuals may not have enough money to purchase those items on a regular basis. Coping methods such as resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, dumpster diving and stealing are not considered to be "socially acceptable" methods for achieving food security. The Capital Area Food Bank of Texas uses the phrase "at risk of hunger" to describe food insecure individuals and to emphasize the consequence of not knowing where that next meal is coming from.
In 2010, 14.5 percent of U.S. households were food insecure sometime during the year, and one third of those had very low food security characterized by reduced or significantly disrupted eating patterns by household members. More than four million Texans (18.8 percent) were at risk of hunger, making Texas the second hungriest state in the nation behind Mississippi.
This map is based on data from the Feeding America Map the Meal Gap 2011 report.
According to the USDA, more than 16 million children lived in food insecure households in 2010. A recent Feeding America report states that Texas has the fifth highest rate of child food insecurity in the nation and accounts for more than 10 percent of food insecure children in the U.S.
Child food insecurity is associated with a range of adverse health, growth and development outcomes, which prevent them from reaching their full potential. The direct and indirect costs on individuals, families and the socio-economic system run into the tens of billions of dollars.
This map is based on data from the Feeding America Map the Meal Gap 2011 report.
Obesity is a public health problem affecting Americans across all incomes, but low-income and food-insecure populations are especially at risk. Food insecurity introduces a host of coping strategies that could lead to weight gain such as overeating when food becomes available, purchasing cheap-high calorie filling foods that are filling, or restricting food intake to protect children from hunger. Research studies indicate a postive association between obesity and food insecurity in select populations. Research on households participating in federal nutrition programs including food stamps, WIC and the school lunch program, do not indicate that obesity increases among most program participants. Participation in the School Breakfast program is associated with significantly lower BMI.
This data set represents the percentage of respondents that are clinically classified as obese based on their height and weight as part of a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index (via the New York Times). Note: The survey was conducted over the course of a year from Jan. 2 to Dec. 30, 2010. The number of people surveyed in each district varies, and ranges from 300 to 2,000 people. A sample size of 300 corresponds to a margin of sampling error of ±5.7%. A sample size of 2,000 corresponds to a margin of sampling error of ±2.2%.
