As another Thanksgiving Passes, it is difficult to think about the families who struggle to afford food. According to the 2016 Food Security Survey, 12.3% of households (or 15.6 million) were food insecure at some point in 2016 and 4.9% (6.1 million) had very low food security.

At the same time, the federal government spends billions of dollars providing food assistance to low-income families each year. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provided $66 billion in food benefits in 2016 to over 44 million people in the average month. Add to that another $13.6 billion for the National School Lunch program and $6 billion for the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program and the federal government spent nearly $85 billion on food assistance for low-income households last year.

Read the source article at aei.org