You would see an older couple who has worked hard their entire lives only to find their savings wiped out by unavoidable medical bills. You would see a single mother who has to choose whether the salary from her minimum wage job will go to buy food or pay the rent. You would see a woman and her daughter, both struggling with mental illness and unable to make themselves leave their apartment, much less hold down jobs and be productive members of society. The problem of hunger in our country is much more complex than many of us realize. Hungry people are seldom helpless or shiftless recipients of charity, as they are often portrayed.
Hungry people have their faults, like everyone else.
But they cope and sometimes get ahead mainly by their own wits and hard work. They sometimes receive charity, but more often get hard treatment from affluent groups. Back to top of page 3. A study commissioned by Second Harvest, the nation's largest network of food banks, found that a large portion of people receiving food donations in 1998 lived in homes where at least one person in the household was working. Hunger is becoming a growing problem among the working poor.