"Meals are scarce," said Susan Smith, a 44-year-old Chester woman with diminishing means. "I'm 5-foot-10 and weigh 130. I should weigh 150.
"I need some food."
Newly released state data from the Department of Public Welfare show that 329,000 Philadelphians are on food stamps, a 13 percent increase since 1998.
The increases since then for the surrounding counties are even more startling.
The number of households on food stamps is up 49 percent in Delaware County, 54 percent in Bucks County, 75 percent in Chester County, and an incredible 82 percent in Montgomery County, according to research by Laura Tobin, outreach supervisor for the Pennsylvania Hunger Action Center, an advocacy group.
Statewide, the number of people receiving food stamps has risen 40 percent, to 1,186,918, since March 1999, Tobin said. The average monthly amount issued per household is $204.61, according to the Department of Public Welfare.
All this has occurred as food prices in the Northeastern United States have risen 14 percent since 2002 and median wages in metropolitan Philadelphia (excluding New Jersey) have dropped 4 percent during the same period, said Mark Price, labor economist with the Keystone Research Center, a nonpartisan policy-development institute in Harrisburg.
"People's income is simply not growing as fast as the prices they're paying for goods and services," he said. "And the economy is not producing as many jobs, while periods of unemployment for workers are lasting longer."
Some of the increase in food-stamp distribution is due to significant efforts by advocates to get more eligible people into the program, experts say.
But fast-descending hard times are creating strong incentive for people to find help.
"I'm at rock bottom, and everything in the supermarket is so high," said Edwina Swinton, 58, a laid-off school worker from the city's Logan section. She joined the food-stamp rolls this week.
