The Geography of Hunger in America

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food-insecure homes as those households that don't regularly have access to enough to eat for an active, healthy life, and the problem is more pervasive in rural America than in cities. Los Angeles, however, has an unfortunate distinction: More than 650,000 children there live at risk of going hungry, more than in any other county in the United States. That's a population larger than the entire state of Wyoming, or roughly the same number of people who live in the District of Columbia.

These results come from a new study by the hunger-relief organization Feeding America, which has mapped county-by-county rates of overall food insecurity, child food insecurity, food-insecure homes unlikely to qualify for federal food stamps, as well as the uneven geography of what it costs these families to buy a meal when they can afford it.