South Carolina: A Hunger and Poverty Snapshot

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In South Carolina, between 2019-2021:

  • Food insecurity in South Carolina averaged 12.60%.
  • That makes South Carolina the 8th-hungriest state with a food insecurity rate 18% 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 14.1%.
  • But using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (which does include safety-net and tax-support income), the poverty rate falls to 10.0%. In other words, these programs reduced the poverty rate in South Carolina by 29% and the number of people living in poverty by 208,000.
  • SNAP, alone, lifted 142,000 people above the poverty line in South Carolina, including 72,000 children, per year between 2013 and 2017, on average.

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