In Mississippi, between 2019-2021:
- Food insecurity in Mississippi averaged 15.3%.
- That makes Mississippi the hungriest state with a food insecurity rate 32% higher than the national average of 10.4%.
- The official poverty rate (which does not account for income from safety-net and tax-support programs such as SNAP, EITC, and others) in the state averaged 18.1%.
- But using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (which does include safety-net and tax-support income), the poverty rate falls to 11.9%. In other words, these programs reduced the poverty rate in Mississippi by 34% and the number of people living in poverty by 183,000.
- SNAP, alone, lifted 109,000 people above the poverty line in Mississippi, including 49,000 children, per year between 2013 and 2017, on average.
