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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. 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.
ERS analyzed responses to questions in the food security
survey about how frequently various food-insecure conditions
occurred during the year, whether they occurred during
the 30 days prior to the survey, and, if so, for how many
days. Findings include:
- About one-third of households with very low food security
at any time during the year experienced it rarely or
occasionally—in only 1 or 2 months of the year.
For two-thirds, very low food security recurred in 3
or more months of the year.
- For about one-fifth of food-insecure households and
30 percent of those with very low food security, the
occurrence was frequent or chronic.
- On average, households that were food insecure at
some time during the year were food insecure in 6 months
during the year.
- On average, households with very low food security
at some time during the year experienced it in 7 months
during the year and in 1 to 7 days in each of those
months.
As a result of these temporal patterns, prevalence rates
of food insecurity and very low food security during the
30 days preceding the food security survey were considerably
lower than the annual rates. The estimated prevalence
of very low food security during a single day was lower
yet—between 0.5 and 0.8 percent of households. The
daily prevalence rate probably is biased considerably
downward due to the omission of homeless people from the
survey, which is based on household addresses.
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