Household Food Security in the United States in
2011
This page provides the following
information:
The prevalence of food
insecurity changed little since 2008-09
In 2011, 14.9 percent of U.S. households were food insecure. The
percentage of U.S. households that were food insecure increased in
2008 and remained at that level through 2011--the highest recorded
percentage since national monitoring of food security began in
1995.
The more severe range of food insecurity, described as very low
food security, increased from 5.4 percent in 2010 to 5.7 percent in
2011, returning to the level observed in 2008 and 2009.
Food-secure households are those with consistent access
throughout the year to adequate food for active healthy living for
all household members. Food-insecure households lack that level of
access at some time during the year.
Report contents:
Household Food Security in the United States in
2011
Key
Statistics & Graphics
Podcast
Listen to a discussion of
the report's findings 
with Dr. Alisha Coleman-Jensen (7 minutes, 08 seconds).
Interpreting the
statistics:
Related Amber
Waves articles:
USDA information:
Additional
resources:
Getting it
right: avoiding common misinterpretations of the data
USDA monitors the food security of U.S. households in order to
support evidence-based policy and program development. The
following is intended to help journalists avoid common
misinterpretations of these statistics.
Challenges in Communicating Food Security Statistics
USDA uses descriptions based on the concept of "food security"
to report results of its annual survey. These descriptions are
consistent with the content of the food security survey questions
and follow a 2006 recommendation by the National Academies'
Committee on National Statistics to avoid using the word
"hunger"--a physiological term--to describe severe food
insecurity.
These descriptions also avoid inconsistencies of interpretation
inherent with the term "hunger" in the United States. A nationally
representative survey in 2007, for example, revealed a wide range
of views about what conditions the government should describe as
"hunger" in official reports. On the one hand, nearly half of
respondents thought that inability to afford nutritious meals, even
without any more severe indications, might be hunger. At the other
extreme, nearly one in six were not sure that the most severe
conditions described in the survey ("Could not afford to eat enough
on several days, felt weak and dizzy and got sick and lost weight
as a result") should be called "hunger."
A Short Primer on Terminology
Food-secure households have consistent access
throughout the year to adequate food for active healthy living for
all household members.
Food-insecure households, at some time during
the year, lack that access. These are households with
low food security or very low
food security.
Households with low food security make up about
two-thirds of food-insecure households. These households manage to
get enough to eat, but reduce the quality, variety, or desirability
of their meals to do so. Members of these households are at
elevated risk for a number of problematic health and developmental
conditions, but because they do not substantially reduce the amount
of food they eat, they are not likely to suffer from hunger in the
sense of the uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack of
food.
Households with very low food security--the
more severe condition--make up about one-third of food-insecure
households. In these households, at least some members (usually
only adults) reduce the amount of food they eat below usual levels
and below the amount they consider appropriate. In most of these
households, the adult respondent reports that in the past 12 months
he or she was hungry and did not eat because there wasn't enough
money for food. If these conditions extended to children along with
adults, the household is classified as having very low food
security among children, the most severe range of food insecurity
reported by USDA.
Common Misinterpretations of Food Security Statistics
The most common misinterpretations fall into four categories.
Three overstate the seriousness of the problem, and one understates
it.
1. Overstating the severity of the condition
represented by a statistic:
Example--incorrect:
In November 2009, a prominent national on-line news source
reported, "A Department of Agriculture report...said the number of
Americans that were hungry rose to 14.6 percent."
Discussion/comment:
Food insecure does not always mean "hungry." The 14.6 percent was
actually the percentage of households that were food insecure in
2008. "Were hungry" describes a more severe condition, and most
Americans would not consider conditions in most food-insecure
households to be appropriately described as such.
Alternative, accurate
language (updated to 2011 statistics): "In 2011, 14.9
percent of U.S. households were unable to put adequate food on the
table at times during the year." (Further description may clarify
that for most food-insecure households, the inadequacies were in
the form of reduced quality and variety rather than insufficient
quantity.)
2. Overstating the number of food insecure persons
by attributing a household's food insecurity to every individual in
the household:
Example--incorrect:
In 2009, a prominent national newspaper reported: "… the number of
youngsters who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly
700,000 to almost 1.1 million."
Discussion/comment:
These numbers actually represent children living in households with
very low food security among children--that is, where at least one
child experienced a severe level of food insecurity. But describing
all the children in those households as having very low food
security, or as being "outright hungry," overstates the prevalence
of the condition. It is not necessarily the case that all persons
living in a household with very low food security experience the
conditions associated with that condition. In some households
with very low food security among children, for instance, the
younger children were not affected to that extent.
Alternative, accurate
language (updated to 2011 statistics): "In 2011, 845,000
children lived in households where one or more of the children
experienced very low food security."
3. Overstating the frequency of food-insecure
conditions:
Example--incorrect:
A few years ago, an advocacy organization in a widely publicized
statement described a USDA statistic as representing children
"going to bed hungry every night."
Discussion/comment:
A common misinterpretation is to cite a statistic and describe the
corresponding conditions as occurring every day. When food
insecurity occurs in U.S. households, it is usually periodic or
occasional rather than persistent or chronic. The food security
scale is designed to register even a single episode of food
insecurity during the year. Most questions in the survey begin: "In
the last 12 months, did you ever…?"
Alternative, accurate
language: Describing children as "being hungry at some
time during the year" would have been a more accurate
representation of the statistic.
4. Understating the severity of food insecurity by
misrepresenting how households are classified:
Example--incorrect:
A 2009 op-ed column in a prominent national newspaper stated,
"The first question [in the food security survey] was whether the
respondent had ever 'worried' about running out of food in the
previous 12 months--not actually run out of food, just worried
about it. A 'yes' answer counts as 'food insecurity.'"
Discussion/comment:
Households that report only worrying about running out of food are
not classified as food insecure. To be classified as food
insecure, respondents must also say "yes" to at least two other
questions about conditions more severe than worrying.