Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that they will not collect food insecurity data for 2025. The timing could not be worse.
Just as cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — are set to go into effect as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Trump in July, we will lose our key data resource to monitor and evaluate the food security status of all Americans.
Today we know so much more about how many Americans face the hardship of food insecurity, along with the attendant causes, consequences and effectiveness of public policy solutions, because three decades ago, USDA leadership sought to establish a rigorous survey of households.
Unless the administration reverses this decision, or Congress takes action to mandate data collection of household food security, then we will be worse off as a nation.
The USDA has annually collected information on the food security status of households since 1995 as a supplement to the monthly Current Population Survey, the source of our official unemployment statistics.
Based on the survey responses, households are categorized as being either food secure or food insecure, where food insecurity means that at some point in the prior year the household was unable to provide adequate and nutritious food for some or all the members of the household due to lack of financial resources. A more severe category is very low food security where normal eating patterns have been disrupted and food intake reduced.
It is not intended to capture the physiological condition of hunger, nor periodic fasting or dieting for noneconomic reasons, but rather the socioeconomic condition of limited or uncertain availability of nutritious and safe foods. The measure has been rigorously tested and validated, and has subsequently been added to several other (more narrowly targeted) federal and non-federal surveys.
In 2023, 13.5 percent of U.S. households were food insecure containing 47.4 million people and 5.1 percent of households containing 12.2 million people met the criteria for very low food insecurity. Importantly, the risk for food insecurity is higher for households with children (17.9 percent).
We know that food insecurity exists in rural areas (15.4 percent) as well as cities (15.9 percent), it exists across regions (14.7 percent in the South, 13.4 percent in the Midwest. We also know that food insecurity falls during strong economic times, declining from 11.1 percent to 10.5 percent during the first Trump administration, and falls in response to increases in safety net benefits, such as the Great Recession and COVID-era expansions in SNAP and cash transfers.
Monitoring the nation’s food security status is important in its own right and also because food insecurity is associated with a variety of negative health outcomes. This includes increased risks of some birth defects, anemia, cognitive problems and aggression and anxiety among children, and decreased nutrient intake, increased rates of mental health problems and depression, diabetes and poor cardiovascular health among adults.
As such, it adds tens of billions of dollars in additional health care expenditures in the U.S., and thus in recent years many health care settings, including the Veteran’s Administration, screen for food insecurity during patient in-take.
While poverty is certainly a key risk factor for food insecurity, it is by no means the sole determinant. Fewer than half of households living in poverty also report being food insecure, and indeed there are more persons residing in food insecure households with incomes above the poverty line than below.
Food insecurity among children has been linked to factors such as maternal mental health, and among seniors to factors such as disability status. Thus, measuring poverty alone is not sufficient for understanding the causes and consequences of food insecurity.
The USDA food security statistics are used not only to monitor and evaluate programs like SNAP, but they are also used by the major charitable food organizations to improve targeting of services across regions and specific demographic groups, such as veterans.
For example, Feeding America uses the food security data to produce its annual Map the Meal Gap that highlights among other things counties and congressional districts with elevated child food insecurity, while Meals On Wheels Association of America uses the USDA-produced information to better assist seniors in need.
By not collecting the data, By not collecting the data, we will lack a systematic understanding of the size and distribution of food insecurity in 2025 and efforts to address the need will be less effective. Now is not the time to walk away from that commitment.
Colleen Heflin is an author of “Food For Thought: Understanding Older Adult Food Insecurity” and a professor of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University.
Hilary W. Hoynes is Chancellor’s Professor of Economics and Public Policy University of California at Berkeley.
James P. Ziliak is Gatton Endowed Chair in Microeconomics and founding director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky.