The share of Americans who experienced severe hunger increased in 2022, according to a new government report. About 5.1% of U.S. households had at least one family member who ate less or irregularly during 2022 because of a lack of money or resources, up from 3.8% in the previous year, and 3.9% in 2020, according to a new report released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That means at least a million more families experienced significant hunger in 2022 compared to the previous year. The USDA tagged this group of people as having “very low food security,” the most severe form of food insecurity. Food security measures how much and frequently people are able to eat.
A few reports earlier this year pointed to rising food insecurity among low-income families, but the annual USDA survey is the most rigorous and authoritative one on the issue, policy advocates and researchers said. To be sure, more than four in five Americans had access to healthy and adequate food in 2022, but food insecurity jumped as a whole for households last year, the report found. About 12.8 percent — 17 million households — in the U.S. were food insecure sometime during 2022, up from 10.5% in 2021 and 10.5% in 2020. “This is the USDA telling the story of millions of people who live in households who are struggling with hunger,” said Geri Henchy, director of nutrition policy at the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit advocate for policies targeting hung …
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