This dataset contains State Food Insecurity metrics displayed in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Environment Atlas website, including the U.S. Household Food Security Scale. The U.S. Household Food Security Scale is designed to register even occasional or episodic occurrences of food insecurity. Some households may be classified as food insecure or as having very low food security based on a single episode during the year. An estimated 11.8 percent of American households were food insecure at least some time during the year in 2017, meaning they lacked access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. That is down from 12.3 percent in 2016. The prevalence of very low food security also declined, to 4.5 percent from 4.9 percent in 2016. A more complete picture of the temporal patterns of food insecurity in U.S. households sheds light on the nature and seriousness of the food access problems households face and can aid in the design and management of programs to improve food security.
Data was last updated on the USDA website in September 2020.
Any data elements with numerical values reflect figures at the locality-level unless otherwise specified with an asterisk (*). See column descriptions for details. For more information on all metrics in this dataset, see the Food Environment Atlas State Food Insecurity documentation.
