Predicting Rates of Food Insecurity in the United States in the Absence of Official Data Collection

As of 2023, more than 47 million people in the United States (14.3%) lived in food-insecure households. In the coming years, however, we will not know whether the national prevalence of food insecurity has risen, fallen, or remained stable, as the USDA recently announced the permanent suspension of food security data collection on the Current Population Survey (CPS). The elimination of the CPS Food Security Supplement (FSS) leaves a critical gap in the national data on economic well-being. This paper presents a model that addresses this gap by predicting national food insecurity rates in the absence of official USDA data. The model draws on established correlates of food insecurity – national rates of poverty and unemployment, and food-specific inflation – to estimate food insecurity rates for all individuals, adults, children, and households. The predicted rates align closely with actual food insecurity rates between 2010 and 2023, with a typical difference of 0.3 percentage points. Sensitivity tests show that the preferred model specification outperforms alternatives. The paper also presents predictions of 2024 food insecurity rates, for which national data are scheduled to be released later in October 2025. While continuing to measure food insecurity using the method employed by the USDA since 1995 is the only way to guarantee consistent data on this critical indicator, the model presented here may prove useful in estimating food insecurity in future years when this USDA data is unavailable.