Prevalence of food insecurity varies by length of reference period

Food insecure households have difficulty providing adequate food for all their members due to a lack of money or other resources for obtaining food. Those households experiencing the more severe very low food security face reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns at times during the year. The food security measurement methods used by ERS are designed to identify occasional or episodic occurrences of food insecurity at any time in the past 12 months. Additional questions in the food-security survey provide information on whether food insecurity or very low food security occurred in the 30 days prior to the December survey. In 2018, food insecurity was experienced by 11.1 percent of U.S. households at any time during the year and by 5.9 percent of U.S. households from mid-November to mid-December. In 2018, very low food security affected 4.3 percent of U.S. households at any time during the year, and 2.4 percent of households from mid-November to mid-December, and 0.6 to 0.8 percent of U.S. households on any day in that 30-day period. This chart appears in the ERS report, Household Food Security in the United States in 2018, released in September 2019.