Courtesy of The Other 98%, with over 9,000 likes and 5,800 shares. The original quote, of course, comes from actor Jeff Bridges. Many other outlets have similarly touted this statistic, including a column in the Washington Post. Are 35 million people in the US really hungry and don’t know where there next meal will come from? Let’s examine where this statistic comes from.

“Food Insecurity” vs. Hunger

The 35 million statistic comes from the annual USDA report on household food security. In 2016, it reported 12.3% (15.6 million) households were “food insecure”. This actually translates to 41.2 million people, more than the meme claims, although it’s repeating older reports back in the mid 2000’s when the number was 35 million. However, it’s important to clarify this report doesn’t measure how many people are hungry, there is no official measure of that. It measures how many are “food insecure”.

Prior to 2006, the USDA had a measure of “food insecure with hunger”, but since then they’ve changed that, as it held inaccurate assumptions. Now, they classify households exclusively according to “food security”. It’s simply wrong to conflate this with hunger, as we’ll see. While hunger is a component of food security, it’s a different phenomenon. To better understand this, we need to see how this component is measured. The USDA breaks down food security into a spectrum with four ranges.

1. High food security—Households had no problems, or anxiety about, consistently accessing adequate food.
2. Marginal food security—Households had problems at times, or anxiety about, accessing adequate food, but the quality, variety, and quantity of their food intake were not substantially reduced.
3. Low food security—Households reduced the quality, variety, and desirability of their diets, but the quantity of food intake and normal eating patterns were not substantially disrupted.
4. Very low food security—At times during the year, eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and food intake reduced because the household lacked money and other resources for food.

Analyzing the Report

When the USDA (and others) claim that 15.6 million households are food insecure or hungry, they mean they fall into categories 3 and 4, low or very low food security. However, it should be noted that the bulk of this food insecurity (60% in 2016) is from category 3. This means that while the quality and variety of their diets were reduced, the quantity was not substantially disrupted. In other words, this would not qualify as going hungry by the popular understanding of the term. Low food security is not the same as hungry, and this category shouldn’t be framed in that regard.

Just 4.9% of U.S. households (6.1 million households) were considered to have very low food security. While this sounds pretty bad, even this doesn’t necessarily equate to “going hungry”. It means that at certain times during the previous year, the household had at least one member whose food intake was reduced or disrupted due to lack of resources. How often this happened, or how severe the food reduction was is not clear. It would certainly be incorrect to assume all of these households or members of the household were consistently short of food, or consistently going hungry based on this designation.

A More In Depth Look

Digging deeper into the report, we find the survey questions asked to determine the level of food security. These were a series of questions in escalating severity regarding food security and potential hunger. The list:

There were an additional 8 questions, similar in nature, for those households with children.

The determination of food security levels were based on responses to these questions. For example, households were classified as food secure if they report zero to two food-insecure conditions. The good news is that 87.7% of US households were food secure throughout the entire year. Households were classified as food insecure if they reported three or more food-insecure conditions, or at least 2 out of the children questions. Determining very low food security was a bit more complex, but generally involved having at least “6 food insecure conditions”.

Trying to Measure Hunger

If one looks at the above survey questions, it should be apparent that most don’t refer to real hunger, at least not as most would imagine it. Being unable to afford balanced meals or worrying about buying food is certainly a problem, but isn’t the same as not getting food, or truly not knowing where the next meal would come from. Virtually all (95% or more) households with very low food security answered yes to the first 6 questions, which indicated their insecurity, but didn’t necessarily indicate the respondents were going hungry.

What about the questions that truly were about hunger? These would be questions 7-10. Of those considered to have very low food security, the lowest level classified by the USDA, here’s how many answered yes (note: “yes” could mean they responded “often” or “sometimes true”):

• In the last 12 months, were you ever hungry, but didn’t eat because there wasn’t enough money for food? 68% said yes
• In the last 12 months, did you lose weight because there wasn’t enough money for food? 44% said yes
• In the last 12 months did you or other adults in your household ever not eat for a whole day because there wasn’t enough money for food? 33% said yes
• Did the previous question occur at least 3 months out of the year? 26% said yes

Remember, just 4.9% of US households were considered to have very low food security to begin with. Of these, only 68% claimed any sort of real hunger from not affording food (the USDA filtered out intentional fasting or dieting in case one is wondering). When it came to more severe events, like not eating for a day, this dropped to 1/3 of the very low security households, and about 1/4 where this was a chronic situation over the year.

Thankfully, the amount of US households going hungry appears to be quite low given this report, somewhere around 1-3%. This would be in the range of 1.5-4 million households, or 3.75-10 million people. Likely less if we mean chronic or severe hunger, and far less if we mean on any particular day. This is still a lot of individuals, and some might find even this number unacceptable, but it’s far lower than the 35 million in this meme, or the 15.6 million households (41 million individuals) that the USDA considers “food insecure”.

Given the small percentage of households affected, it’s also worth asking the cause of this hunger. Is it due to drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness or just honest, struggling people down on their luck? Analyzing this goes beyond the scope of this post, but those answers might be revealing of the nature of the problem.

Additionally, the trend appears to be positive. In recent history, food insecurity peaked in 2011, with 14.9% of households considered low or very low security. Since then, it’s decreased each year, now down to 12.3%. As for very low food secure households, the ones in danger of real hunger, that’s gone from 5.7% in 2011 down to 4.9%. This means over 95% of households are above this level. When the real context is known, it’s doubtful that very many would consider this an atrocity worth going to war over.