WASHINGTON, DC – The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) announced today that a new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report based on Census Bureau surveys shows another rise in the number of hungry and food insecure Americans. The total number of people living in food insecure households in this country – with or without hunger – went up to 36.3 million in 2003. This number included 23 million adults (10.8 percent of all adults) and 13.3 million children (18.2 percent of all children.)

This number compared to 34.9 million in 2002, 33.6 million 2001, 33.2 million in 2000, and 31 million in 1999. 11.2 percent of US households ( 12.6 million households) experienced either food insecurity or hunger in 2003.

9.6 million of these individuals lived in households that experienced outright hunger.

“Such extensive and growing suffering threatens children’s development and education, families’ stability, children’s and adults’ health, and our wealthy society’s commitment to fundamental values,” said Jim Weill, President of FRAC. “Of equal concern are reports that some in the White House and Congress are discussing cuts in the years ahead in the nation’s basic human needs programs, which would add millions more people to the already appalling national breadline.”

Black (22.1 percent) and Hispanic (22.3percent) households experienced food insecurity at double the national average.

The USDA report also included food insecurity and hunger rates for every state, based on three-year averages. (The analysis uses three-year averages because the survey sample size for each state is too small to give accurate numbers for each individual year.) The states with the highest food insecurity rates, in order, were Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, New Mexico, Utah, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Idaho, South Carolina, Oregon, and Georgia, all with rates at or above 12.9 percent of households, well above the national average.

“Almost certainly the key cause of the worsening of the situation from 1999 to 2003 was weakness in the economy for the bottom half of Americans – wage stagnation, joblessness and underemployment,” said Weill. “Hunger rates in 1999 were already much too high, and three of the last four years weren’t recession years, so the worsening rates really reflect the growing inequality of income in the country, and the harmful holes in the safety net.”

The federal nutrition programs, are keeping the food insecurity numbers from getting much worse. But the very high levels of hunger and food insecurity in this country also point to the still inadequate reach of key supports like food stamps, child nutrition programs, TANF, unemployment, and health insurance, as well as the problem of stagnant wages and shrinking workplace benefits.

“More hunger and food insecurity mean more children who have trouble at school, more illness among children and adults, less ability to purchase a balanced and nutritious diet, and higher levels of anxiety for parents trying to make ends meet,” said Lynn Parker, FRAC's Director of Child Nutrition.

Since 1995, the United States Department of Agriculture, using data from surveys conducted annually by the Census Bureau, has released estimates of the number of households that are food insecure--broken into “food insecure with hunger” and “food insecure without hunger.” Food insecure households are those that are not able, for financial reasons, to access a sufficient diet at all times in the past 12 months. Households labeled hungry are those where one or more household members experienced hunger due to lack of financial resources at some time in the past 12 months. The Census/USDA definitions are rigorous and assure that only those experiencing substantial hunger or food insecurity without hunger are so classified. Inadequate family resources lie at the heart of the matter. As the USDA study shows, food secure households typically spent 34 percent more for food than food insecure households of the same size and household composition.

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The Food Research and Action Center (www.frac.org) is the leading national organization working for more effective public and private policies to eradicate domestic hunger and undernutrition.

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