A World of Hunger and Inequality: Why the System Fails and What Must Change

The United States is the Wealthiest country in the world with a total wealth of over 135 trillion dollars. The state of California has a GDP of about $4 trillion, and if were a country, it would be the 5th largest economy in the world, and more productive than India and United Kingdom. It is therefore unbelievable that America suffers from poverty and hunger.

According to the U.S. based Food Research and Action Center, following are the quick facts on poverty and hunger in the United States updated September 4, 2024. The report is based on U.S. Census Bureau latest reports Poverty in the United States, 2023, Income in the United States 2023, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States, 2023 released on September 10, 2024:

Poverty in the United States, 2024;

One in 7 (13.7 percent) 9.9 million children lived in poverty in 2023, an increase from 1 in 8 (12.4 percent) or 8.9 million in 2022. Poverty was notably higher in 2023 for Black individuals (18.5 percent), Latino individuals (20.9 percent), and Native American and Alaska Native individuals (19 percent) compared to White, no-Hispanic individuals, whose poverty rate fell to 8.8 percent. Higher rates of poverty in Black, Latino and Native communities are due to systematic racism that results in neighborhood disinvestment, occupational segregation, wage discrimination, etc.

Nationally, the Western region had the highest average poverty rate (15 percent), followed by= the South (13.6 percent), the Northeast region (11.9 percent) and Midwest region (9.8 percent). The Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) lifted more people out of poverty in 2022 compared to 2021 and 2020. In 2023, SNAP lifted 3.4 million people out of poverty, 1.3 million of whom were children, school meals lifted 1.2 million people out of poverty, 651,000 of which were children, and WIC lifted 203,000 people out of poverty, 102,000 of whom were children.

Hunger in the United States, 2024;

5.1% of U.S. Households (1 in 20) experienced very low food insecurity, a more severe form of food insecurity, where households report regularly skipping meals or reducing intake because they could not afford more food. 13.8 million children lived in households that experienced food insecurity, up from 3.2 percent in 2022.

Rates of insecurity were higher for Black (23.3 percent) and Latino (21.9 percent) households, both more than double the rate of White no-Latino households (9.9 percent).

A higher portion of households in urban areas (15.9 percent) and rural areas (154 percent) experienced food insecurity compared to suburbs (11.7 percent). Households in the Southern region continued to experience higher rates of food insecurity than any other U.S. region, with 14.7 percent of households experiencing food insecurity in 2023.

The prevalence of food insecurity varied considerably by state, ranging from 7.4 percent in New Hampshire to 18.9 percent in Arkansas (for the three-year period of 2021-2023).

Five Facts about Hunger in America

But it is very likely that you have had a recent interaction with someone who was hungry. The organization listed the following surprising facts about the hunger in America.

1. One in 5 American kids does not have enough food and doesn't know where their next meal will come from. That is about 13 million children who experience hunger. The latest number of US Department of Agriculture show food insecurity has risen dramatically to 12.8% of households facing hunger in 2022, up from 10.2% from 2021, the largest increase since 2008.
2. As of April 2023 more than 22 million U.S. households use SNAP benefits to help with food costs. People who use SNAP benefits use it to buy groceries, seeds, and plants for food, but it cannot be used to purchase hot food or household items like cleaning supplies, vitamins, or diapers. Approximately 92% of SNAP go to households with incomes at or below the poverty line.
3. On an average day, more than 30 million U.S. children receive meals from the federal National School Lunch Program. It helps kids during the school year with free or reduced or reduced-price meals. But when students are not in school, like during spring or summer breaks, many children go without food.
4. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost 17% of American children live in poverty, which is one in six children who live in poverty. The rates vary by state, ranging from 8.1% to 27.7%. Children in poverty are more likely to experience hunger.
5. Eighty percent of all single-parent homes in the U.S. are led by moms. Single mother households experience food insecurity at a higher rate than other households. According to the USDA, nearly one-quarter of single mother families in the U.S. face hunger.

However, people in rural communities and the South are often more likely to lack access to enough food, because of the factors like poverty, unemployment, and the cost of living. Inequality is the root cause of food insecurity for people of color. Food insecurity happens to people of all races and ethnicities. However, it is more common for people of color because of long history of racism and discrimination in the United States. Hunger can affect people from all walks of life.

Millions of people in America are just one job loss, missed paycheck, or medical emergency from hunger. But hunger does not affect everyone equally -some groups like children, seniors, and people of color face hunger at much higher rates.

According to Bread Organization Hunger in the U.S. exists just as it does overseas. For developed countries like the U.S., hunger doesn't come from not having enough food available. There is enough food everywhere. The overwhelming cause of hunger in developed countries is poverty.

Why are U.S. Families Hungry? Low-income households already spend a greater share of their income on food. Food accounts for 16.4 percent of spending for households making less $10,000 per year compared to the U.S. average of 12.7 percent. A person working full-time at a minimum wage earns about $14,500 a year.

Approximately 13.5 percent of U.S. households - more than 47million Americans, including nearly 14 million children - struggle to put food on the table. Here the measure of of hunger is "food insecurity" -an ongoing uncertainty of where the next meal will come from.

More than I in 5 U.S. children are at risk of hunger (I in 3 among Black and Latino children). To the surprise of many, most Americans (51.4 percent) will live in poverty at some point before age 65.

Concern USA Organization on its website of October 10, 2024 presented World hunger facts: What you need to know in 2024 (and 2025). Published annually, the global Hunger Index gives a snapshot of current world hunger facts and figures as well as where we have (and haven't) made progress and what needs to change to get us closer to ensuring food security for all.

It listed World Hunger by the numbers as follows;

1. The world produces enough food to feed all of its 8 billion people, yet 733 million people (1 in 11) go hungry every day.
2. Hunger rates in Africa are especially high, with 1 out of 5 people going hungry each day.
3. 2.8 billion people around the world cannot afford a healthy diet - 355 of the global population.
4. In low-income countries, 71.5% of people cannot afford a healthy diet. In high-income countries, that figure drops to 6.3%.
5. According to the 2024 Global Hunger Index hunger rate levels are ranked Serious in 36 countries.
6. The 2024 Global Hunger Index also rates hunger levels as Alarming in 6 countries: Burundi, Chad, Madagascar, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen.
7. The number of people experiencing hunger has gone up by approximately 152 million since 2019.
8. As of this writing, the Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC) estimates that 1.33 million people around the world are experiencing famine or famine-like conditions.
9. Half of all child deaths are linked to malnutrition.

1. We likely won't reach the Zero Hunger Goal by 2030. Progress against hunger has slowed to a troubling degree. Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia face rising undernourishment, child mortality and malnutrition driven by poor diets, economic challenges and increasing impact of natural disasters. Thus reaching Zero Hunger by 2030 a goal set by UN general in 2015 appears impossible, even until 2160.
2. More countries are slipping backwards in making their progress to end hunger. In five countries, it has gone worse since 2000; Fiji, Jordan, Libya, Syria and Venezuela.
3. We cannot separate hunger from political and climate realities. The only way to address hunger is at the political level, particularly in terms of conflict, climate change, and economic crisis.
4. We need to focus on the intersectional link of gender inequality, the climate crisis, and hunger.
5. The situation is grim but not hopeless. It should not derail us from working to end hunger. We need to reverse the alarming trends that are increasing hunger, and accelerate support equitable, nutritious, and resilient food systems in the face of conflict and climate change.

It found evidence that economic inequality is good growth as well new convincing evidence that inequality is bad for growth. It concluded that while may be a key factor in reducing absolute poverty in low income countries, the idea by some that the benefits will 'trickledown and thus reduce poverty, is disproved in the literature. Evidence suggests that in many cases growth benefits the already well-off and that poverty, in effect, has a negative impact on the prospects of growth.

Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent non-governmental organization (NGO) its secretariat in Nairobi, Kenya and offices in Addis Ababa, Brussels, Geneva, New York, and Washington, DC. It is focused on alleviation of poverty. Its website states that our economy is broken.

From Ghana to Spain, India to Brazil, absurd levels of wealth exist alongside desperate poverty. Since 2015, the richest 1% has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet. In countries around the world, a small group of elites are taking an ever-increasing share of their nation's income, while hundreds of millions of people are still living without access to clean water and without enough food to feed their families.

Extreme inequality is hurting us all, but it is the poorest people who suffer most- especially women and girls. No matter how hard they work, far too many suffer the indignity of poverty wages and are denied basic rights. In many a decent education or quality healthcare has become a luxury only the rich can afford.

Oxfam looked at the numbers. The world's richest 1% possess more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people. Nearly half of the world's population -3.4 billion people - are living on less than $5.5 a day. Every year, 100 million people worldwide are pushed into poverty because they have to pay out-of-pocket for healthcare.

Today 258 million children - 1 out of every 5, will not be allowed to school.

Globally, women earn 24percent less than men and own 50% less wealth. Extreme inequality is a barrier to poverty reduction. The gap between rich and poor grows wider every year and leads to huge differences in life chances. It exacerbates existing inequalities in other areas, such as those based on gender, geography, ethnicity, race, case, or religion.

It damages our economies, fuels public anger across the globe, and stands in the way of eliminating global poverty. The race to the bottom on personal income and corporate tax was a large part of the problem.

While public services are suffering from chronic underfunding or being outsourced to private companies, many governments are under-taxing corporations and wealthy individuals, losing significant amount of money that could be invested in schools, hospitals, and roads. Corporate tax dodging costs poor countries at least $100 billion every year.

Oxfam's worked to fight for a more equal world. From campaigning to end the financial secrecy that shelters trillions hidden in tax havens, to encouraging investment in universal education and healthcare - Oxfam is working to make sure that the poor get a share of the power and resources that will help to reduce poverty and inequality.

We have extensive experience of delivering programs and campaigns that advance people's rights through work on tax, budget, and social accountability.

Oxfam key approaches include the following;

1. Invest in work on tax justice and domestic resources mobilization and advocate fairer, pro-poor taxation policies.
2. Support civil society to monitor public finance and to hold governments accountable for delivery of free quality services.
3. Support campaigns for health and education and support organizations that work with governments on innovative ways to reach women and girls.

World Economic Forum reported on February 5, 2024 that according to Oxfam income inequality has accelerated since the pandemic and offered remedies to bridge the gap:

Gender Inequality:

1. The inequality gap was widening with more than two-thirds (69%)of global wealth held by developed nations, while less than a third can be found in the developing world. 60% of people in the world have grown poorer - equating to almost 5 billion people - according to a new paper by Oxfam.
2. Women and minorities were also disproportionally affected by growing income inequality.
3. The World Economic Forum's Future of Growth Report 2024 proposed a new scoreboard for accessing growth and aligning it with wider goals around inclusiveness and sustainability.

Global Wealth is concentrated in the Global North

When it came to wealth distribution , more than two-thirds (69%) of global wealth was held by the developed nations, while less than a third can be found in the developing world.

The world's richest people and their share of wealth of wealth are also highly concentrated in the developed world. The top 1% now own 43% of all global financial assets. At the same time, Oxfam says, only 0.4% of the world's largest and more influential companies are committed to paying staff a living wage - that is remuneration that enables people to afford a decent standard of living.

Women and minorities at the thin end

Similarly, in Brazil, the average income of whiter people is 70% higher than that of descendants of African lineage.

What the World Economic Forum is doing about the gender gap?

Adding to this is the high share of work undertaken by women in care and domestic work that goes unpaid. Women's unpaid work in care alone is worth $10.8 trillion annually, according to Oxfam three times the size of the global technology sector.

The pandemic as a turning point for income inequality World Economic Forum said Oxfam's report, along with other research pointed to the pandemic as a major turning point for the increase in income inequality.

Up until the COVID-19 pandemic, the incomes of the poorest 40% in the world had been growing faster than the respective national averages in most countries monitored, according to the 2023 United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Report.

However, the trend was reversed in 2020, leading to the largest rise in income inequality between countries in three decades. Based on available data, the UN gauges inequality to have risen 4.4% between 2019 and 2020 alone.

This also tallied with the World Economic Forum's Future of Growth 2024 report that highlighted a gap in inclusiveness between high-income economies - with a growth score of 69 - and low-income economies with less than half that score of 30. The Forum stated that this trend had been evident for some time, but became more pronounced with the compounding impact of the pandemic, rising inflation and cost-of-living crisis.

Finding solutions to income inequality

Oxfam called for the governments to take a proactive role in shaping their economies to boost equality, which can be achieved through a mix of measures, including the following:

1. Guaranteeing public services such as healthcare, education, care and food security known to address inequality.
2. Investment in public infrastructure and services.
3. Better governance of the public sector to ensure greater accountability and transparency.
4. Strengthening laws for gender and racial justice.
5. Improving business governance to avoid corporate and wealth becoming too large.
6. Capping CEO pay while protecting payment of a living wage.
7. Creating more effective corporate tax regimes and ensuring enforcement.
8. Offering proactive for sustainable, equitable business models through taxation and other incentives.