“We normally see 30 to 40 clients a day,” said the manager of a Joplin, Missouri, food pantry. “Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a sharp decrease in number of clients, sometimes as few as four a day.”

This is not what I expected to hear when I visited this food pantry to learn about their programs. But their experience is not an anomaly. From my conversations with other poverty fighting organizations in southwest Missouri, some report a 50% or greater decrease in clients, which is particularly puzzling given that the national unemployment rate has vaulted over 11%.