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The following paper examines the demographic characteristics and economic status of food bank users in a large Canadian metropolis. The analysis documents some of the empirical complexity of the coping strategies employed by low-income households to obtain essential resources, including the multiple economies (domestic, informal, social, market and state) that households engage on a routine basis. The data for the study derive from interviews with a stratified random sample of 800 food bank users. The results confirm that food bank users had an economically marginal position and used emergency food programs as an important supplemental source of support among their patchwork of survival strategies. Many of their coping strategies, however, tended toward social marginalization and exclusion. Housing costs consumed the majority of their available monthly income, while several factors helped to predict the depth of the poverty that the respondents experienced. While those with market income benefited the most on average, both state transfers and informal support had positive effects on food bank users' economic statuses. For women in the sample, labour market attachment exerted a negative influence, suggesting that the low-wage work available was insufficient to lift them out of the depths of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]