14% of Americans Use Food Stamps

43.6M need help to buy groceries
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 2, 2011 6:48 PM CST
14% of Americans Use Food Stamps
File photo of home-grown veggies.   (AP Photo/Marco Garcia)

A sizable number of Americans—about 14%, in fact—continue to need government help to buy groceries, the Wall Street Journal reports. A new Labor Department survey says 43.6 million people in the US were signed up with the food stamp program as of November, an increase of 14.2% from the previous year. Washington, DC, and Mississippi had the highest rates, with more than 20% of their residents using food stamps. New Mexico saw the biggest jump, to 19.4%, up 3.2 percentage points.
(More Americans stories.)

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