America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2009
Food Security
A family's ability to provide for its children's nutritional needs is linked to the family's food security—that is, to its access at all times to adequate food for an active, healthy life.38 The food security status of households is based on self-reports of difficulty in obtaining enough food, reduced food intake, reduced diet quality, and anxiety about an adequate food supply. In some households classified as food insecure, only adults' diets and food intakes were affected, but in a majority of such households, children's eating patterns were also disrupted to some extent and the quality and variety of their diets were adversely affected.39 In a subset of food-insecure households—those classified as having very low food security among children—a parent or guardian reported that at some time during the year one or more children were hungry, skipped a meal, or did not eat for a whole day because the household could not afford enough food.40
Indicator ECON3: Percentage of children ages 0–17 in food-insecure households by poverty status, selected years 1995–2007
NOTE: Food-insecure households are those in which either adults or children or both were food insecure. At times they were unable to acquire adequate food for active, healthy living for all household members because they had insufficient money and other resources for food. Statistics for 1996–1998 and 2000 are omitted because they are not directly comparable with those for other years.
SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement; tablulated by U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service and Food and Nutrition Service.
- About 12.4 million children (17 percent of all children) lived in households that were classified as food insecure at times in 2007. About 691,000 of these children (0.9 percent of all children) lived in households classified as having very low food security among children.
- The percentage of children living in food-insecure households in 2007 was essentially unchanged from 2005 and 2006 and was lower than the 19 percent observed in 2004. The percentage of children living in households with very low food security among children increased from 0.6 percent in 2006 to 0.9 percent in 2007.
- In 2007, the proportions of children living in food-insecure households were substantially above the national average (17 percent) for those living in poverty (43 percent), Black, non-Hispanics (26 percent), Hispanics (27 percent), those whose parents or guardians lacked a high school diploma or GED (38 percent), and those living with a single mother (32 percent).
38 Anderson, S.A. (Ed.). (1990). Core indicators of nutritional state for difficult-to-sample populations. Journal of Nutrition 120 (11S), 1557–1600.
39 Nord, M. (2002). Food insecurity in households with children (Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Report FANRR34–13). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Retrieved from http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/fanrr34/fanrr34-13.
40 In reports prior to 2006, households with "very low food security among children" were described as "food insecure with hunger among children." In 2006, USDA introduced new language to describe ranges of severity of food insecurity in response to recommendations by an expert panel convened by the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies. The methods used to assess children's food security remained unchanged, so the statistics for 2005 and later years are directly comparable with those for 2004 and earlier years. For further information see the following reports:
National Research Council, (2006). insecurity and hunger in the United States: An assessment of the measure. Committee on National Statistics, Panel to Review the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Measurement of Food Insecurity and Hunger, G.S. Wunderlich and J.L. Norwood. (Eds.). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Nord, M., Andrews, M., and Carlson, S. (2006). Household food security in the United States 2005 (Economic Research Report 29). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Retrieved from http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err29.