16.5% of the U.S. population was on food stamps on average in 2017, versus 11% on average from 1973-2008.
In 2017 over 42 million received food help from the program, but only 28 million would have had the average receiving help returned to 11%.
In the first five months of 2018 the percentage receiving help has fallen to 15.4% on average, implying a smaller gap of about 11.6 million.
The trend is in the right direction, but we are hardly back to normal.
