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Food insecurity among households with children slightly rose between 2023 and 2024, according to recently released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The annual USDA report on household food security released in late December could likely be the last — unless Congress intervenes — as the federal agency announced in September that it will no longer produce future studies. In that announcement, the USDA said “these redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger.”
The USDA added that food insecurity trends “have remained virtually unchanged” despite an over 87% increase in spending for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program between 2019 and 2023.
Food-insecure households are defined by the USDA as those that have experienced difficulty at some point during the year to provide “enough food for all their members because of a lack of resources.”
Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, said in a Dec. 31 statement that these annual USDA reports over the last three decades have been “the gold standard for understanding the struggle that millions of families face to put food on the table.” Without the studies gauging household food insecurity, she said, it will be difficult to track how cuts to SNAP under Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” budget law will impact families.
The USDA report also helps inform policy decisions for children who are fed through the School Breakfast Program and National School Lunch Program as well as afterschool, child care and summer meals, FitzSimons said.
Free school meals have become increasingly available to students through expanded participation in the federal Community Eligibility Provision among high-poverty schools and districts. But it’s likely that fewer schools will be eligible for that universal meal program as fewer students will be directly certified through SNAP once cuts from the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” go into effect.
As the state of policies to gauge and address student hunger remains in flux, here are some key USDA figures on children’s food insecurity.
By the numbers
14.1 million
The number of children in 2024 who lived in households experiencing food insecurity.
13.8 million
The number of children in 2023 who lived in households experiencing food insecurity.
10.7 million
The number of children in 2019 who lived in households experiencing food insecurity.
10.1%
The percentage of children in 2024 who lived in households where at least one child was food insecure.
9.9%
The percentage of children in 2023 who lived in households where at least one child was food insecure.
7.3%
The percentage of children in 2019 who lived in households where at least one child was food insecure. This was the lowest percentage between 2001 and 2024.
17.4%
The percentage of Black households with food-insecure children in 2024, which is notably higher than the national average of 9.1%.
11.6%
The percentage of Hispanic households with food-insecure children in 2024.
1.4 million
The number of households with food-insecure children living in the South in 2024.
726,000
The number of households with food-insecure children living in the Midwest in 2024.
662,000
The number of households with food-insecure children living in the West in 2024.
512,000
The number of households with food-insecure children living in the Northeast in 2024.
