More than 44 million Americans experienced food insecurity last year, the highest number since 2014, at the same time that pandemic assistance was reduced, said a USDA report on Wednesday. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and anti-hunger groups called on Congress to protect funding for public nutrition programs, including WIC and SNAP.
Food insecurity is defined as having difficulty at some point during the year in obtaining enough food due to a lack of money or other resources. The USDA report is based on a Census Bureau survey of households in December. Respondents were asked if they could afford balanced meals or if they had to reduce or skip meals for lack of money or went hungry for a day, and how often.
“The survey responses should be a wake-up call to those wanting to further roll back our anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs,” said Vilsack. “These findings are unacceptable, yet the report is the latest piece of evidence that as the pandemic began to wane in 2022, another public health concern — food insecurity — increased.”
In the previous report, from 2021, 33.8 million people, or 10.4 percent of the U.S. population, were food insecure, continuing a decade of improvement. But last year, the total jumped by 30 percent to 44.2 million people, or 13.5 percent of Americans. It was the highest number since 2014, when 48.1 million people, or 15.4 percent of the population, were food-insecure.
One-fifth of all children — 13.4 million — were in food-insecure households. About 55 percent of food-insecure households participated in one or more of the USDA’s largest nutrition programs: WIC, SNAP and school lunch, said the report.
SNAP is one of the flash points for the 2023 farm bill. House Republicans insisted, as part of recent debt limit legislation, on raising the age ceiling for able-bodied adults subject to a 90-day limit on SNAP benefits unless they worked at least 80 hours a week. Georgia Rep. David Scott, the senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said the increase in food insecurity showed that SNAP was a vital program and that “we must reject harmful attempts by extreme House Republicans to slash SNAP benefits.”
“This latest data makes it abundantly clear that Congress must unsnarl its current gridlock so we can get on the path toward enacting smart policies that can end hunger and poverty,” said Lisa Davis of Share Our Strength, an anti-hunger group. Davis called for full funding of WIC, protection of SNAP benefits, and restoration of child tax credit (CTC) enhancements. The credit was expanded and was fully refundable in 2021. SNAP benefits were increased temporarily during the pandemic but are now an average of $85 a month lower per person.
“Hunger in America soared in 2022 after falling in the previous year due to Covid-19 pandemic relief efforts,” said Luis Guardia of the anti-hunger Food Research and Action Center. “The data underscore how the unwinding of critical pandemic interventions and rising costs have taken a toll on families, particularly households with children and households of color.”
Lauren Bauer of the Brookings Institution said on social media that hunger is “a solvable policy problem. Fiscal support, including CTC and SNAP boosts, did their job. Congress didn’t.”
The typical food-secure household spent 15 percent more on food than the typical food-insecure household of the same size and composition, including SNAP benefits, said the USDA report.
The USDA report, which dates from 1995, is based on a Census Bureau survey of households. It did not analyze the causes for the increase in food insecurity. There are many factors involved, it said, among them household circumstances, the economy, and federal, state, and local policies. “We do know increases in nutrition assistance and other assistance do lead to a reduction in food insecurity,” said Matthew Rabbitt, an author of the report, during a webinar on it.
To read the report, Household Food Security in the United States in 2022, click here.