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Identifying Childhood Hunger In Maine, Deirdre Mageean

Maine Policy Review

Recent political campaigns at the national and state levels have been filled with much rhetoric about the present and future of families and children. But effective public policy developed in response to many pressing financial and social needs of families and children has not followed from the rhetoric. The lack of adequate quantitative research on the needs of children is often cited as a reason to move cautiously in responding to "perceived needs." Deirdre Mageean discusses the nation’s public policy responses to poverty that have been attempted since the mid-1960s. Mageean, who served as co-director of a year-long childhood hunger …