Around one military family out of eight turned to food banks during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new academic study led by a researcher at the University of Georgia has revealed.
Researchers surveyed more than 8,000 military families who applied for child care subsidies from the National Military Family Association, a military-focused nonprofit, in the spring of 2021 and found that about 13% of those families had used a food pantry in the past year.
While advocacy organizations have long said that many military families struggle to put food on their tables — a problem greatly exacerbated by the pandemic — numbers that help quantify the issue and how troops cope are scarce and have usually come from sources outside the Pentagon.
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Overall, data from 2020 and 2021 shows that more than 280,000 active-duty service members — 24% of the military — reported some level of food insecurity, according to Defense Department numbers released last year. However, very few of these troops are able to use federal programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps or SNAP.
That program includes the military’s housing allowance in income calculations, which results in low-income service members making too much to be eligible for food assistance.
The consequence is that,…
