1 in 5 U.S. children live off food stamps

(Image credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

last updated 28 January 2015

The economy may have picked up, but children are still struggling to get enough to eat. New statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau have revealed that about 16 million U.S. children — roughly one in five — received food stamps last year.

The number of children on food stamps is higher than it was at the start of the recession in 2007, when nine million children — about one in eight — were on food stamps.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the data is "the latest evidence of how little America's less-advantaged groups — children, but also young adults, the poor, minorities, the middle class — have benefited from an economic recovery whose gains have gone disproportionately to the affluent." Forty-seven percent of children on food stamps live only with their mothers, but the rate of children with married parents who are on food stamps has doubled since 2007, too.