The latest U.S. Agriculture Department Household Food Security in the United States report is based on the Current Population Survey (CPS) Food Security Supplement data collected by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, in December 2023. 

The study, built on a survey made up of nearly 40,000 people, found that the 2023 prevalence of food insecurity was statistically significantly higher than the 12.8% recorded in 2022 (17.0 million households), 10.2% in 2021 (13.5 million households) and the 10.5% in 2020 (13.8 million households). 

Last year, 86.5% of U.S. households were food secure and the remaining 13.5%, or 18.0 million, were food insecure.

Child food insecurity statistically remained similar between 2022 and 2023. Children were food insecure at times during 2023 in 8.9% of U.S. households, statistically identical to the 8.8% in 2022. 

According to USDA Food Assistance Economist Matthew P. Rabbitt, food security is conceptualized as a continuum that captures increasing levels of the severity of food insecurity among United States households. 

"Early research showed that food insecurity is a managed process, meaning households have some control over how food insecurity is experienced," he explains. 

Households are asked a series of 10 questions about food security, and households with children are asked an additional eight questions about children's food security. 

Food-insecure households are categorized as homes that have had difficulty at some time providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. 

Food insecurity is measured like this: food security people are those who can afford enough healthy food, food insecure are those who worry, stretch, or juggle, low food security people are those with a reduced quality and variety of diet, and very low food insecurity can be measured by reduced food intake of adults and or children. 

Most households with very low food security reported that a household adult had been hungry at times but did not eat because there wasn't enough money for food. 

According to Rabbitt, "looking back, food insecurity increased 11.1% in 2007 to 14.6% in 2008, with the onset of the great recession, in 2011, food insecurity rates peaked 14.9% in all U.S. households. By 2021, food insecurity declined to 10.2%." 

According to the report, the prevalence of food insecurity varied considerably in 2023 among households with different demographic and economic characteristics. 

38.7% of households with annual incomes below the official poverty line were food insecure, compared with just 7.5 percent of those with incomes at or above the poverty line.

Rates of food insecurity in 2023 were statistically significantly higher than the national average, 13.5%, for households with children and children under age 6, women living alone, households headed by a single female or a single male, black and hispanic households, households with incomes below 100%, 130% or 185% below the poverty threshold, households in principal cities and nonmetropolitan areas, and homes in the South. 

The prevalence of households with food-insecure children was statistically significantly higher than the national average, 8.9%, for female-headed households, households with a black, non-Hispanic reference person and Hispanic person, and households with incomes below 100%, 130%, and 185% below the poverty line.