USDA: Food insecurity rose sharply in U.S. households in 2022

Inflation, high housing costs and the end of pandemic food assistance all contributed to a sharp rise in food insecurity nationwide in 2022 that saw 17 million households, including 1 million where children lived, at risk of hunger or actually hungry.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture report on hunger released Wednesday found more than 44.2 million Americans at times struggled in 2022 to provide adequate food for “active, healthy living.” That’s the federal government’s benchmark for being food secure.

Those numbers represent a significant increase in hunger or risk when compared to the previous year’s 13.5 million households that lacked the resources to be food secure.

In 2022, in fact, more than 1 in 20 households — 6.8 million — had very low food security. “In this more severe range of food insecurity, the food intake of some household members was reduced and normal eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because of limited resources,” the federal agency reported.

In a statement, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the report is a “sobering reminder that, while the vast majority of Americans are able to affordably feed themselves and their families, too many of our neighbors struggle to put healthy food on the table. These numbers are more than statistics. They paint a picture of just how many Americans faced the heartbreaking challenge last year of struggling to meet a basic need for themselves and their children.”

Is hunger trend changing?

The report also marks what advocates for low-income households hope will not reverse what had been a more hopeful trend.

“The new figures, from the agency’s Economic Research Service, show an end to a nearly decade-long decrease in the number of families reporting food insecurity, at a time when food prices remain elevated because of inflation,” The Washington Post reported.

The report is based on a nationally representative survey of 31,948 households. It also showed that more than 1 in 12 U.S. households containing children were food insecure, an increase of 1 million households that include children compared to 2021. The report said those families were unable at times to provide adequate, nutritious food for their children.

Per Reuters, “Previous reports from food banks and the U.S. Census Bureau have indicated that hunger is increasing as low-income Americans struggle to recover from the pandemic and from the end of expanded food assistance.”

That’s what Deseret News heard as well in late 2021, as more than 125 cars waited in line on a Wednesday afternoon in downtown Salt Lake City to reach a food giveaway by the Utah Food Bank in a church parking lot.

“Food insecurity was a national concern even before the pandemic squeezed millions of families in myriad ways, from shrinking wages and lost jobs to less access to school meal programs,” the article said, noting pandemic assistance had kept the numbers somewhat stable.

Food insecurity’s uneven impact

Then, as now, three groups in particular struggled: households with children, Black Americans and those living in the South. The Post article highlighted regional differences, noting that “hunger is a growing problem in the South and in rural areas (14.7 percent, compared with 12.5 percent in urban areas).”

Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute specializing in food insecurity, nutrition and health disparities, said at the time that kids who don’t have adequate nutrition are more likely to have developmental delays, while adolescents face increased risks of anxiety, depression and even suicidal thoughts. “Food insecure adults are more likely to have chronic diseases like diabetes. And food insecurity physically ages older adults,” the article said.

Per Waxman, “At 70, your health status looks more like somebody who’s 14 years older than you are. We talk about food insecurity like it’s a social welfare problem. But it’s really a public health problem. We’ve already been living with that and anything that has made it worse even in the short run is something you may be living with for a while. That’s really worrying.”

The Thrifty Meal Plan, on which federal food benefits are calculated, was revised last year. It, too, noted that nutrition insecurity is related to poor health.

While the USDA said in the new report that children are “usually shielded from the disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake that characterize very low food security,” that was not the case for 381,000 households with children in 2022. Those households reported that “children were hungry, skipped a meal or did not eat for a whole day because there was not enough money for food.”

The average food-secure household spent 15% more on food than the typical food-insecure household of the same size and composition, according to the Agriculture Department.

Most food-insecure households did get some outside help to meet food needs. About 55% of them said that in the previous month, they participated in at least one of the federal nutrition assistance programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and the National School Lunch Program.