Food Insecurity Demographics Overview

In the U.S., some of the populations with the highest percentages of households experiencing food insecurity, thus the greatest vulnerability to become food insecure were:

• Households with children headed by a single woman (single moms) (28.7%)
• Women living alone (13%)
• Black and Hispanic households (19.1% and 15.6% respectively)
• Low-income households (variable)
• Households located in principal cities (center of city) (12.4%)

(USDA, 2019)

Single women with children are the household composition demographic with the single highest prevalence of food insecurity overall.

Black and Hispanic populations are more impacted by food insecurity compared to their white and non-Hispanic counterparts.

There is also a strong link between income-to-poverty ratio and food insecurity, as low-income often plays a role in food insecurity when people are forced to chose paying rent versus their next meal.

However, it is important to remember that all of these demographic factors are intersectional in nature, so the weight of the being food insecure is much greater on a low-income, Black single mom in the South versus a middle-income Hispanic woman living alone in the Northeast.

Regionally, the South experiences the highest rates of food insecurity (11.2%) compared to the Northeast, which experiences the least (9.6%). Pre-Covid 19, both New York and Atlanta display around average levels of food insecurity compared with the national average.

COVID can be used as a lens into food insecurity, as many of the underlying vulnerability factors for COVID are also true for food security, such as income inequality and lack of access to resources from historically marginalized communities along racial lines. These issues arise from historic issues in zoning, redlining, and gentrification. Both of these crisis affect the most vulnerable, and this is by no accident.