"With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children."

Check out Jason Deparle and Robert Gebeloff's excellent series "The Safety Net"  on the strains, stresses, and trends of our social programs, as found in the New York Times.

The graphically-minded Times also includes an interactive map providing food stamp usage data across the US.  Here's an example from Tulsa County, Oklahoma:

There are some great, public (read: free) resources for analyzing economic data, though many times you have to be willing to wade through and reformat information for presentation purposes. The US Census Bureau collects and analyzes a mountain of useful data.

 "LED on the Map" (for the curious, that stands for Longitudinal Employer-household Dynamics)

 - Provides a map-based view of where people live and work, with several additional layers of analysis on wages, industry, and commuting patterns.

 - Data lags a bit - the current most-recent analysis only covers through 2006 so the current economic situation is not reflected.

Here's an example: 

This map shows where workers earning $1200 per month or less live who are employed in Tulsa County.  Remember - this is up through the end of 2006.

January, 2008 through September, 2009

Source: Oklahoma Employment Security Commission