Hunger and Food Insecurity in the United States

One of the most disturbing and extraordinary aspects of life in this very wealthy country is the persistence of hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that in 2006:

• 35.5 million people lived in households considered to be food insecure.
• Of these 35.5 million, 22.9 million are adults (10.4 percent of all adults) and 12.6 million are children (17.2 percent of all children).
• The number of people in the worst-off households increased to 11.1 from 10.8 in 2005. This increase in the number of people in the worst-off category is consistent with other studies and the Census Bureau poverty data, which show worsening conditions for the poorest Americans.
• Black (21.8 percent) and Hispanic (19.5 percent) households experienced food insecurity at far higher rates than the national average.
• The ten states with the highest food insecurity rates in 2006 were Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Arizona.

What do hunger and food insecurity mean in the United States?
Very simply, hunger is defined as the uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack of food. When we talk about hunger in America, we refer to the ability of people to obtain sufficient food for their household. Some people may find themselves skipping meals or cutting back on the quality or quantity of food they purchase at the stores. This recurring and involuntary lack of access to food can lead to malnutrition over time.

In some developing nations where famine is widespread, hunger manifests itself as severe and very visible clinical malnutrition. In the United States hunger manifests itself, generally, in a less severe form. This is in part because established programs – like the federal nutrition programs – help to provide a safety net for many low-income families. While starvation seldom occurs in this country, children and adults do go hungry and chronic mild undernutrition does occur when financial resources are low. The mental and physical changes that accompany inadequate food intakes can have harmful effects on learning, development, productivity, physical and psychological health, and family life.

The government uses two main terms to describe the levels of hunger problems we typically face in the United States. Food security is a term used to describe what our nation should be seeking for all its people – assured access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life, with no need for recourse to emergency food sources or other extraordinary coping behaviors to meet basic food needs. In a nation as affluent as ours this is a readily achievable goal. Food insecurity refers to the lack of access to enough food to fully meet basic needs at all times due to lack of financial resources. There are different levels of food insecurity.

How do we measure hunger and food insecurity?
In the 1980s, due to a combination of cuts in public welfare programs and a recession, many communities across the country experienced an enormous increase in demand for emergency food, often among families with children. Community leaders wanted to document this growing problem so that policymakers would recognize its severity and do something about the hunger they were seeing. Out of this expressed need developed FRAC's Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project (CCHIP), the first nationwide survey measuring the extent of hunger among families with children, the results of which were released in 1991 and 1995.

At the same time that CCHIP was being conducted, FRAC worked with a broad coalition of national organizations to get national nutrition monitoring legislation through Congress – legislation that required the federal government, among other things, to develop a measure of food insufficiency that could be added to the national nutrition monitoring system. Using CCHIP's methodology as a foundation, the USDA and the Census Bureau developed a food security module to be included in the Current Population Survey (CPS).

Since 1995 the U.S. Census Bureau has conducted an annual survey of food security among a nationally representative sample of people living in the U.S. using the food security module in the CPS. The questions asked are about anxiety that the household budget is inadequate to buy enough food; inadequacy in the quantity or quality of food eaten by adults and children in the household; and instances of reduced food intake or consequences of reduced food intake for adults and for children.

The survey (called the "food security module") is widely regarded as a reliable indicator of household well-being and will serve as the basis for evaluating our nation's progress in reducing food insecurity -- one of the Surgeon General's health objectives for the nation for the year 2010. The goal is to increase food security from 88 percent of all US households (1995) to 94 percent.

In 2006, the USDA Economic Research Service asked the National Academies of Science to carry out an independent review of the survey methodology. They concluded that the survey and the methodology to measure food insecurity were appropriate and that it was important to continue monitoring food security. However, they felt that the descriptions of categories should be revised to better convey that it is a measure of household food insecurity.

As a result of the scientific panel’s review and subsequent recommendations, USDA introduced new labels for the survey results. These are intended to measure the full range of food insecurity as experienced by households. While the word hunger has been removed from the description of the results of the survey, it should not be interpreted that there has been a major shift in the incidence of hunger. There are countless people in this country facing hunger daily.

The new terms used in the survey to describe food security are:

• High Food Security: These are households that did not answer ‘yes’ to any of the food insecurity questions.

• Marginal Food Security: This term captures families that answered ‘yes’ to one or two of the food security questions, meaning they have has some difficulties with securing enough food. Previously, they would have been categorized as “Food Secure.”

These two groups together will describe food insecurity. The new terms used in the survey are:

• Low Food Security: This term replaces “Food Insecurity without Hunger.” Generally, people that fall into this category have had to make changes in the quality or the quantity of their food in order to deal with a limited budget.

• Very Low Food Security: This term replaces “Food Insecurity with Hunger.” People that fall into this category have struggled with having enough food for the household, including cutting back or skipping meals on a frequent basis for both adults and children.

According to the results of the Census Bureau survey, those at greatest risk of being hungry or on the edge of hunger (i.e., food insecure) live in households that are: headed by a single woman; Hispanic or Black; or with incomes below the poverty line. Overall, households with children experience food insecurity at almost double the rate for households without children. Geographically, food insecurity is more common in central city households. The survey data also show that households are more likely to be hungry or food insecure if they live in states in the Midwest and South.

What are the implications of high hunger rates?
The ability to obtain enough food for an active, healthy life is the most basic of human needs. Food insecure households cannot achieve this fundamental element of well-being. They are the ones in our country most likely to be hungry, undernourished, and in poor health, and the ones most in need of assistance. A high number of food insecure households in a nation with our economic plenty means that the fruits of our economy, and the benefits of public and private programs for needy people, are not yet reaching millions of low-income people who are at great risk.

Updated 1/17/07