Hunger affects African-Americans in similar amounts to individuals in African nations, though the impacts are more severe in Africa, according to a new report released this month.
Bread for the World, a Christian organization which seeks to end hunger globally, released “Shared History, Shared Experiences: Hunger and Poverty Among African-Americans and Africans” [PDF] this month. As of 2010, nearly one-third of African-American homes have difficulty feeding their families. One in three people in Sub-Saharan Africa, about the size of North America, suffer from chronic hunger.
The report compares Virginia, Texas and Ohio to African countries Liberia, Tanzania and Malawi. The report says:
Liberia is about the same size as Virginia, but its poverty rate is nearly quadruple that of African-Americans in that state. Similarly, three times as many Tanzanians live in poverty as do African-Americans in Texas. At 40 percent, the poverty rate in Malawi is slightly higher than the African-American poverty rate in Ohio (31 percent), but the degree of poverty is substantially greater in Malawi, where more than 40 percent of the population lives on less than $1 (U.S.) per day.
“Hunger and poverty among African-Americans mirror the unjust circumstances many people in African nations endure,” said Rev. Derrick Boykin, associate for African-American leadership outreach at Bread for the World, in a press release. “However, hunger and poverty impacts many African nations more severely, often resulting in disease or even death.”
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