ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how welfare reform has affected the access of low-income families with children to food stamps, the largest source of food assistance and the only one substantially affected by welfare reform. It focuses on a nutrition and hunger as they affect the well-being of children, including the troubling trends in obesity among adolescents in low-income families. The trend of rising levels of obesity and of being overweight, particularly the high rate for low-income adolescents, is a high priority problem with serious long-term consequences. The chapter looks at the federal government's effort to measure food security and hunger and explores the question of whether food insecurity and hunger have become more acute with welfare reform. In 1995, the federal government launched a major effort to measure food security and hunger. Food security measures are based on a set of questions included annually in the Current Population Survey since 1995.
