Some 11.1 percent of U.S. households are food insecure, meaning they did not have enough food at times during 2018 due to a lack of money or other resources, said the USDA on Wednesday. It was the lowest food insecurity rate since 2007, just before the Great Recession drove food stamp enrollment and costs to record highs.
The Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group, called for more federal action to eliminate hunger. “What the nation does not need is the weakening of nutrition programs and other safety net supports that has been coming in waves of unprecedented attacks by the Trump administration,” said FRAC president Jim Weill.
Although Congress rejected Republican proposals for broader and stricter work requirements for SNAP in the 2018 farm bill, the administration proposed new restrictions this year on SNAP eligibility that would end benefits for 3.1 million people and that would restrict the ability of states to provide food stamps to able-bodied adults beyond the usual limit — 90 days of benefits in a three-year period — unless they work at least 20 hours a week.
In a cost-benefit analysis of the proposal to tighten SNAP eligibility rules by ending so-called categorical eligibility, the USDA said in July, “The proposed rule may also negatively impact food security and reduce the savings rates among those individuals” who no longer qualify for food stamps.
“The 2018 prevalence of food insecurity declined, for the first time, to the pre-recession (2007) level of 11.1 percent,” said the USDA in its annual report. “The decline from 2017 (11.8 percent) was statistically significant and continued a decline from a high of 14.9 percent in 2011.”
The 11.1 percent rate is the equivalent of roughly 14.3 million households out of the U.S. total of 130 million households. The insecurity rate was slightly higher, 11.5 percent, when Americans were counted individually — 37.2 million people in a population of 323 million — and was down from 12.5 percent in 2017.
Food insecurity rates were highest among households with children (a 13.9 percent rate); households with children and a single parent (27.8 percent for a woman and 15.9 percent for a man); households with adults living alone (14.2 percent for women and 12.5 percent for men); households headed by blacks (21.2 percent); households headed by Hispanics (16.2 percent); and households with incomes near or below the federal poverty line (29.1 percent). The South had a higher food insecurity rate (12 percent) than other U.S. regions.
According to the report, 6.8 percent of households experienced low food security and 4.3 percent experienced very low food security, meaning they reported skipping a meal, going hungry because they could not afford food, or running out of food at times during the year.
“These food insecurity numbers are worrisome, yet the Trump poverty-live proposal would worsen food insecurity,” Danilo Trisi, an analyst at the think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said on social media. The administration wants to use a lower measure of inflation in setting the federal poverty line. “By the 10th year of indexing the poverty line using their lower inflation index, hundreds of thousands of people could lose eligibility for food assistance programs,” Trisi said.
The USDA began producing the food security report in the mid-1990s. “Annual monitoring of food security contributes to efficient operation of the federal nutrition assistance programs as well as private food assistance programs and other government initiatives aimed at reducing food insecurity,” said the Economic Research Service in the latest report. More than 37,000 households, selected as a representative sample of the nation, took part in a Census Bureau survey last December that provided data for the report.
The Census Bureau is scheduled to release its annual report on the U.S. poverty rate next Tuesday.
The USDA report, Household Food Security in the United States in 2018, is available here.