Study: 22% of families have turned to church food pantries for help

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NASHVILLE, Tenn.—During the holiday season, many church-affiliated food pantries across the country will collect donations to help people in need. Chances are, some food donors also know what it’s like to go to bed hungry.

Nearly one in four Americans (22 percent) say their family has turned to a church-run food pantry in the past, according to a new survey from Nashville-based LifeWay Research.

“Churches may have the reputation for serving donuts, coffee and pot-luck dinners to their members,” said Scott McConnell, vice president of LifeWay Research. “But they also are supplying food for many people in need.”

In an online survey of 1,158 Americans conducted in September, participants responded to the statement: “My family has received food from a church-run food pantry in the past.”

Americans from a wide range of backgrounds said “yes.” That includes one in four churchgoers (26 percent) along with one in five (18 percent) people who never attend services.

One in three African-Americans (37 percent) and evangelicals (35 percent) say their family has received help. So do almost three in 10 (28 percent) of those without a college degree.

About one in four Hispanic Americans (25 percent) and one in five (19 percent) Anglos say they received help.

People in the West (28 percent) were more likely to say they’d received help than those in the Northeast (17 percent) or South (20 percent).

food pantries cans425Older Americans (11 percent) and those with college degrees (13 percent) were among the least likely to say “yes.”


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About 50 million Americans have trouble putting food on the table, according to Feeding America, a national network of food banks. A similar number of people received food stamps in 2013, the USDA reported.

“There is an abundance of food in the U.S., but plenty of people still go hungry,” McConnell said. “Many churches respond by faithfully following the biblical principle of being open handed to the poor and needy by maintaining well-stocked food pantries to share.”

Researchers conducted the online survey of adult Americans Sept. 17-18. They invited a sample of an online panel reflecting the adult population of the United States to participate. Responses were weighted by region, age, ethnicity, gender and income to reflect the population more accurately. The completed sample is 1,158 online surveys. The sample provides 95 percent confidence the sampling error from this panel does not exceed plus or minus 2.9 percent. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.


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