National Food Security Data Is Critical to Anti-Hunger Policies and Programs
In the early 1980s, the U.S. experienced a public reemergence of hunger — not because the country lacked food, but because federal policy choices tightened the “last-resort” systems that had helped Americans with low incomes weather recessions. The Reagan administration took office amid rising economic strain and subsequently pursued a broad package of tax breaks for the wealthy, along with cuts, reductions, and eligibility restrictions across low-income economic mobility programs, including the Food Stamp Program (now the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP). Those changes landed while unemployment and poverty were climbing, creating a predictable mismatch: need increased, but assistance became harder to access and less adequate.