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Article: Hunger in America: A Matter of Policy.
- Article from:
- Social Research
- Article date:
- March 22, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 New School for Social Research. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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For centuries, advocates for the poor, social reformers, and policymakers have debated ways to address inequalities in access to food and other resources. Debates have centered on the conflict between sympathy for the plight of poor people and complaints that public assistance is too expensive and might encourage recipients to become dependent on charity. Since the English Poor Laws of the 1500s, public and private assistance policies have been explicitly designed to provide minimal support--that is, just enough to prevent overt starvation, but not so much as to encourage dependency. This balance, however, is not easily achieved. In the United States, for example, hunger ...