Fifty years after food stamps

Dr. Sean O’Rourke

Since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Food Stamp Act into law 50 years ago, it has helped reduce childhood hunger and malnutrition, created a support system for not only the working poor but also seniors and disabled people, and provided many with the reinforcement they needed to attend school and job-training centers. But, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest statistics, 48 million Americans don’t know where their next meal is coming from or how they will pay for it. In an op-ed he co-authored for The Greenville News, Furman communication studies professor Sean O’Rourke examines the problem.