Report

Food Insufficiency During the Pandemic

By Angela Rachidi

American Enterprise Institute

August 11, 2020

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.

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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.

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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.