More children were on food stamps in 2014 than before the start of the Great Recession in 2007, according to data released by the Census Bureau Wednesday.
Some 16 million children, or one in five, were receiving food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the Spring of 2014. That's up from about 9 million who were receiving food stamps prior to the recession.
Half of those children, 8 million, lived with single mothers, and about 5 million lived with parents who were still married.
At the same time, participation in SNAP seems to be going down, the first time since the start of the recession, reported The Associated Press.
The government spent $76 billion on SNAP in 2014, an 8 percent decline from the previous year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Nearly 46.5 million Americans received food stamps last year, up from 26 million in 2007, but participation is expected to continue to decline over the next decade, The Associated Press said.
The Republican-led Congress was recently able to negotiate a $800 million per year cut to the food stamp program's budget, much less than the $4 billion initial proposal, and President Barack Obama signed the policy, which was part of a larger farm bill, into law early 2014.
The newly elected chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and the new chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., have indicated that they will examine the food stamp spending in 2015, the AP said.
More evidence pointing toward increased child poverty levels came in a recent report from the Southern Education Foundation, which found that more than half of public school children qualified for cheaper meals through a federal lunch program - the highest percentage in at least 50 years.
And according to the U.S. Census Bureau's annual report released last year, one in five children in the U.S. currently lives in poverty, reported The Guardian.
Out of 35 economically developed countries, the U.S. comes in 34th in terms of child poverty levels, the United Nations found in a study.
