ABOUT THE DASHBOARD
The U.S. Household Food Insecurity Rate (%) – Consumer Food Insights Survey dashboard summarizes U.S. household food insecurity as estimated in our Consumer Food Insights survey. The CFI survey is an ongoing web-based, monthly survey of 1,200 consumers from across the U.S. The CFI survey utilizes the 6-item short form of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Household Food Security Module. A household is characterized as food insecure if they respond affirmatively to two or more of the USDA’s 6 questions. Respondents who reported an annual household income above 185% of the Federal poverty line are assumed to be food secure. This determination was made according to research by Ahn et al. (2020), which demonstrates that using a modified income-based screening procedure for internet surveys better approximates the government estimates of food insecurity.
HOW TO USE THIS DASHBOARD
- Select the category on the left panel and the survey date.
- For each category, hover over the time series to see the tooltip for the Food Insecurity rate (%) for the selected category.
- The Average Food Insecurity Rate for All Households (%) for the selected date range is displayed on the visual on the left. The time series and the aggregate visual changes depending on the survey date selected.
VARIABLE DEFINITIONS
Category:
- All households
- Households with and without Children
- Rural & Urban – Households residing in rural and urban areas. Rural or urban classification follows the definition defined by the OMB and commonly used by the USDA Economic Research Service. Respondent-provided ZIP codes are mapped to Rural-Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) Codes to determine urban (RUCA = 1-3) and rural (RUCA = 4-10) status.
- Income. Households reporting annual income below $35,000 and greater than or equal to $35,000
Survey Date: Indicates the month of data collection for each wave of the CFI survey.
Food insecurity: Households are classified as food insecure if they (1) answer affirmatively to two or more questions in the USDA 6-item short for food security module, and (2) report annual income less than 185% of the federal poverty line. Average Food Insecurity Rate for All Households (%): The average food insecurity rate for all households is a simple average of the monthly food insecurity rates for the selected range of months.
SOURCES
Center for Food Demand Analysis & Sustainability (CFDAS) at Purdue University, and Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. Data are from CFDAS’ Consumer Food Insights Survey.
DASHBOARD AUTHORS
Annapurni Subramaniam, Elijah Hunter Bryant, Joseph Balagtas, Sam Polzin and Jayson Lusk
SUGGESTED CITATION
Subramaniam, A., Bryant E., Balagtas, J., Polzin, S. & Lusk, J. U.S. Household Food Insecurity Rate (%) – Consumer Food Insights Survey. Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability. [Month Day, Year retrieved]. https://ag.purdue.edu/cfdas/data/u-s-household-food-insecurity-rate-consumer-food-insights-survey