Food insecurity climbed in 2022 as pandemic aid ended

The United States Department of Agriculture is out with its its latest report on Household Food Security.

While the vast majority of people are well fed, 17 million households struggled to put food on the table at least once in 2022. That’s just under 13%, which is almost 5 million more households than the year before.

Several groups saw increases in food insecurity last year, according to the USDA. There was a nearly 45% jump for families with children, noted Lisa Davis with advocacy group Share Our Strength.

“This report comes on the tails of the most recent child poverty report,” she added, “which showed the largest one year spike in child poverty rates in history.”

All this was avoidable, said USDA deputy undersecretary for food and nutrition Stacy Dean.

“We saw significant withdrawal in government assistance associated with the pandemic. And as that was pulling back, we see the consequences, which was unfortunately a rise in food insecurity,” she said.

And that rise was not even. “So we see twice the levels of food insecurity for Black and Latinx households,” said Geri Henchy with the Food Research and Action Center.  

Another group particularly affected were single-parent households headed by women, with food insecurity in about a third of those families.