Georgia’s Hunger Games Fewer than 4,000 adults in the southern
state receive welfare, even as poverty is soaring. How Georgia
declared war on its poorest citizens—leaving them to fight for
themselves. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images When the
economy crashed in 2008, millions of Americans lost their jobs.
Applications for food stamps soared. So did attendance at
emergency food providers—soup kitchens and food pantries—that
help the estimated 50 million people, working and non-working,
who can't afford enough groceries to get through the month.
Unlike in past economic downturns, though, the welfare rolls
barely budged. Where 15 years ago 68 percent of poor Americans
received cash via Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (as
welfare was officially renamed in 1996), today only 27 percent
of Americans with incomes low enough to qualify for cash
benefits receive them. As the New York Times' Jason DeParle
discussed in a front-page article earlier this year, the
resulting welfare gap has left at least 4 milli