Food insufficiency during the pandemic | American Enterprise Institute

Key Points

Food insufficiency rates since the start of the pandemic—that is, not having enough food to eat—have hovered around 11 percent of all US households and 14 percent for US households with children, with little fluctuation week to week.
Assessing households’ perceived changes in food insufficiency from before the pandemic to after shows only slight increases, indicating that federal economic relief efforts likely protected many households from increases in severe food hardship.
Food insufficiency levels remained elevated for households that experienced employment disruptions and recent unemployment, especially when households did not report receiving unemployment compensation.
For food insufficiency levels to remain stable, these findings point to a continued need for providing economic relief to households that have experienced employment disruptions.

Introduction

The coronavirus pandemic has
caused the most severe disruption to the US labor market in recent history.
Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show the US unemployment rate
rising rapidly from a low of 3.5 percent in February to a peak rate of 14.7
percent in April and gradually falling to 10.2 percent in July.¹ Such
a rapid disruption to the labor market raises numerous questions about
financial hardship in the wake of this crisis, especially in light of the $2
trillion response to the economic upheaval that Congress passed and President
Donald Trump signed on March 27, 2020.

On one hand, millions of families have lost employment income they would normally use to cover necessities such as food and rent. On the other hand, the federal response to the pandemic has been unprecedented in both its size and scope. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act dramatically increased unemployment benefits and sent $1,200 to the vast majority of US adults through economic impact payments.² Additionally, Congress authorized several changes to the nation’s food assistance programs through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.³ The Families First Act allowed states to allocate the maximum Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit to enrolled households,⁴ roll back work requirements for able-bodied adult SNAP recipients,⁵ implement the Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program to provide food benefits to households whose children received free or reduced meals before schools shut down,⁶ and increase funding for the emergency food program to help stock food pantries and other food distribution programs.⁷

Despite
these efforts, recent reports have implied that households have experienced a substantial
increase in food insecurity since the start of the pandemic.⁸ However,
comparing current food insecurity data to similar information from past surveys
is challenging, especially because the questions used to assess food
insecurity differ slightly across surveys, as do the populations surveyed.
Reported trends in food insecurity also contradict other data that show
reductions in poverty among US households since the start of the pandemic and
increases in income across the distribution because of the economic relief
efforts Congress authorized.⁹

This
report addresses some of the challenges associated with measuring food insecurity
by relying on a straightforward food insufficiency question included
on the recently implemented US Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey.¹⁰ Food
insufficiency assesses whether a person has enough food, whereas food
insecurity is a much broader concept, usually measured by a 10-item series of
questions (18 items when children are present in the household) developed by the
US Department of Agriculture.¹¹

Food
insecurity captures things such as anxiety around affording food, getting
balanced meals, and getting enough food. The US Census Bureau has long used a
food insufficiency question on various surveys to ask respondents directly
whether their household has enough food. While it is still problematic to compare
pandemic food insufficiency data to previous surveys (due to different
populations surveyed and slightly different measures), the Household Pulse
Survey asked respondents about both their current food insufficiency and
their food insufficiency before the pandemic, allowing us to assess perceived
changes before and after the pandemic.

Data
from the Household Pulse Survey suggest that food insufficiency among US households
hovered at around 11 percent in the months following the start of the pandemic
and that it was particularly concentrated among households that lost
employment-related income. Furthermore, the data suggest that overall rates of
food insufficiency changed little from before the pandemic to after. The data
also show that rates of food insufficiency relate to real financial strain (as
opposed to perceived strain), because total food spending was lower among food
insufficient households than it was for households that reported they had
enough food.

These findings suggest that US policy efforts to date have protected most families from facing severe food insufficiency problems in the aftermath of the pandemic, even though a relatively small share still struggle to provide enough food for their households. However, the findings also suggest that without continued relief efforts, such as unemployment compensation, food insufficiency levels likely will rise. Lawmakers and state social service agencies should consider these findings as they explore additional economic relief efforts, including access to unemployment compensation and federal nutrition assistance programs.

Read the full report.

Notes

1. US Bureau of
Labor Statistics, Economic News Release, “Employment Situation Summary,” August
7, 2020, https://www.bls.gov/news. release/empsit.nr0.htm; US Bureau of Labor
Statistics, Economic News Release, “Employment Situation Summary,” May 8, 2020,
https:// www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_05082020.htm; and US Bureau
of Labor Statistics, Economic News Release, “Employment Situation Summary,”
March 6, 2020, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_03062020.htm.

2. US Department of
Labor, “Unemployment Insurance Relief During COVID-19 Outbreak,”
https://www.dol.gov/coronavirus/ unemployment-insurance; and Internal Revenue
Service, “Economic Impact Payments,”
https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/economic-impact-payments.

3. Families First
Coronavirus Response Act, H.R. 6201, 116th Cong.,
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6201/text.

4. US Department of
Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, “SNAP COVID-19 Emergency Allotments
Guidance,” https://www.fns.
usda.gov/snap/covid-19-emergency-allotments-guidance.

5. US Department of
Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, “SNAP—Families First Coronavirus
Response Act and Impact on Time Limit for Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents
(ABAWDs),” March 20, 2020,
https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/ffcra-impact-time-limit-abawds.

6. US Department of
Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, “State Guidance on Coronavirus
Pandemic EBT (P-EBT),” https://
www.fns.usda.gov/snap/state-guidance-coronavirus-pandemic-ebt-pebt.

7. US Department of
Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, “TEFAP: Allocation of Coronavirus Aid,
Relief, and Economic Security Act Supplemental Appropriations,”
https://www.fns.usda.gov/tefap/allocation-coronavirus-aid-relief-and-economic.

8. Diane W.
Schanzenbach and Abigail Pitts, “How Much Has Food Insecurity Risen? Evidence
from the Census Household Pulse Survey,” Institute for Policy Research, June
10, 2020,
https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/documents/reports/ipr-rapid-research-reports-pulse-hh-data-10-june-2020.pdf;
Elaine Waxman, Poonam Gupta, and Michael Karpam, “More Than One in Six Adults
Were Food Insecure Two Months into the COVID-19 Recession: Findings from the
May 14–27 Coronavirus Tracking Survey,” Urban Institute, July 18, 2020,
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/more-one-six-adults-were-food-insecure-two-months-covid-19-recession;
and Lauren Bauer, “The COVID-19 Crisis Has Already Left Too Many Children
Hungry in America,” Brookings Institution, May 6, 2020, https://www.
brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/05/06/the-covid-19-crisis-has-already-left-too-many-children-hungry-in-america/.

9. Jeehoon Han,
Bruce D. Meyer, and James X. Sullivan, “Income and Poverty in the COVID-19
Pandemic,” Brookings Institution, June 26, 2020,
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Han-et-al-conference-draft.pdf.

10. US Census
Bureau, “Source of the Data and Accuracy of the Estimates for the 2020
Household Pulse Survey,” 2020, https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/technical-documentation/hhp/Source-and-Accuracy-Statement-June25-June30.pdf.

11. Alisha Coleman-Jensen et al.,
“Household Food Security in the United States in 2018,” US Department of
Agriculture, Economic Research Service, September 2019,
https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=94848.