Increasing Childhood Poverty and Hunger
Lately there have been unsettling reports about increases in children living in poverty in the U.S. For one, a recent article out of Boston features an emergency room survey that found doctors in the city are seeing more hungry and underweight young children in the emergency room than any time in more than a decade. The survey revealed a sharp increase in the percentage of families with children who reported not having enough food each month (going from 18% in 2007 to 28% in 2010), and a 58% increase in the number of severely underweight babies under the age of one. An expert in the article points out that this level of malnourishment “is similar to what is more typically seen in developing countries.” The article relays that pediatricians in other cities like Baltimore, Little Rock, and Minneapolis are also reporting increases in malnourished children.
