Once poor families pay rent and bills, little or nothing is left for food. There really are times when we are really hungry, and there is nothing to eat. According to the Rockefeller Foundation, the depth and breadth of poverty is such in the United States that there are more children suffering from hunger here than there are children in such countries as Angola, Somalia, Haiti, Zimbabwe, El Salvador, or Cambodia. Over the past decade, clinics around the U.S. have reported an alarming increase in the incidence of severe forms of malnutrition in some poverty-stricken areas where hunger is a harsh reality faced by millions of American families struggling to make ends meet, without success. By definition, families below the poverty line cannot feed their children and pay the rent.
Food is what poor families scrimp and save on.
Who would argue that a child simply cannot start out right in life without protection against the risk of being born into the abject poverty of a family with grossly inadequate income. It's society's duty and responsibility to protect its children from suffering or death because of poverty. Indeed, more American children die each year from poverty than from traffic fatalities, and twice as many children die in this country from poverty than from cancer and heart disease combined. And poverty, of course, has especially serious consequences for infants and toddlers. Children born into poor families are more likely to be premature, to have low birth weight, to die within the first year of life, and, of course, to experience much more illnesses and all kinds of health-related problems.