Last month, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released their annual report detailing the prevalence of food insecurity in the United States. The report found that 13.5 percent of all US households are food insecure, or, in plain language, have “limited or uncertain access to adequate food”—a significant increase from the year prior. Just a week later, the US Census Bureau released their annual report on income in the United States, in which they found strong income growth throughout the income distribution. So, at the same time that incomes were rising for low-income households, households were having a harder time affording food. Why?

Although structural forces such as unrelenting food inflation are likely to be a culprit, the data suggests that the food insecurity measure itself may not be identifying the most disadvantaged households—and is getting worse over time.

Each month, the US Census Bureau fields a survey of a representative group of American households to collect statistics on unemployment, household composition, and other measures of economic and social wellbeing. As part of this survey each December, respondents are asked up to 18 questions about whether they have experienced any difficulties accessing adequate food in the past year. These questions capture a wide range of severity. While certain questions ask respondents if they have ever had to skip meals for an entire day because they couldn’t afford food, other questions ask whether the household is able to afford a balanced diet. Depending on the number of hardships that a given household indicates, it is classified as food secure or food insecure.

Last year, we published a paper that delved into more than 20 years of food insecurity data, and we found that many households classified as food insecure were not at the bottom of the income distribution; in fact, they seemed to have ample financial resources. For example, in 2022, more than one-in-five food insecure households had incomes that placed them in the top three income quintiles. Moreover, we found that the distribution of food spending was similar across food insecure and food secure households, even when we controlled for household size and geographic variation in cost of living. Despite the fact that we would expect the food insecurity measure to identify the most disadvantaged households, the current measure indicates that a non-negligible share of food insecure households may have sufficient resources for food after all.

According to the latest year of data, this incongruence has only grown larger. In Table 1, we show the share of the food secure and insecure that are in each income and food expenditure quintile, both for 2022 and 2023.

Table 1. Share of Food Secure and Food Insecure by Income and Food Expenditure Quintile, 2022 and 2023
	2022		2023
	Food Secure	Food Insecure	Food Secure	Food Insecure
Income
First Quintile	15.5	48.8	15.5	48.0
Second Quintile	18.7	28.5	19.0	27.1
Third Quintile	21.1	13.2	20.6	14.4
Fourth Quintile	22.2	6.9	22.7	7.9
Fifth Quintile	22.5	2.7	22.6	2.6
Expenditures
First Quintile	20.0	26.2	19.5	28.8
Second Quintile	19.6	22.3	20.0	21.8
Third Quintile	19.8	17.4	19.6	20.1
Fourth Quintile	19.9	16.2	20.0	15.2
Fifth Quintile	20.8	17.8	20.8	14.8

In 2022, approximately 23 percent of food insecure households had incomes that placed them in the top three income quintiles. In 2023, this share increased to 25 percent—indicating that fully one-in four food insecure households have incomes that place in the top income groups. To be sure, almost none of the food insecure are high-income (5^th income quintile), and are much more likely than food secure households to be in the bottom income quintile. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that such a large and growing share of households reporting food insecurity fall into the middle- to upper end of the income distribution.

Moreover, the distribution of food spending is comparable between food insecure and food secure households, indicating that their spending patterns on food are not substantially different. After adjusting for regional variation in the cost of living and the number of individuals in each household, we found that in 2022, 34 percent of food insecure households’ were in the top two food spending quintiles, and over half (51.4 percent) of food insecure households’ weekly food spending placed them in the top three quintiles. In 2023, the share of food insecure households at the top of the spending distribution declined—likely due to the expiration of particularly generous pandemic-era food assistance benefits—but still over half of food insecure households were in the top three spending quintiles.

How much of the increase in food insecurity in 2023 is attributable to these middle- and high-income households? To assess this, we estimate the number of food insecure households at each point in the income distribution, and see where the overall number of food insecure households increased the most. Specifically, we first calculate the share of all food insecure households that are in each ~$10,000 income interval for both 2022 and 2023. We then rely on estimates from the USDA on the total number of food insecure households in each year—17.0 million in 2022 and 18.0 million in 2023. By multiplying the share of all food insecure households in each income interval by the total number of food insecure households in that year, we are able to estimate the total number of food insecure households in each income interval. In Table 2 below, we present the total number of food insecure households in each income group for both 2022 and 2023.

Table 2. Number of Food Insecure Households by Income Group (Millions)
Income Group	2022	2023	Change
0-10k	1.64	1.53	-0.12
10k-20k	2.30	2.44	0.15
20-30k	2.49	2.57	0.07
30-40k	2.27	2.53	0.26
40-50k	1.88	2.04	0.16
50-60k	1.51	1.42	-0.09
60-75k	1.83	1.62	-0.21
75-100k	1.41	1.68	0.27
100-150k	1.09	1.53	0.44
150k+	0.59	0.65	0.06
Total	17.00	18.00	1.00

According to Table 2, roughly 8.7 million (or approximately 51 percent) of the 17 million food insecure households in 2022 had annual incomes below $40,000. In 2023, there was only a slight change in the number of low-income food insecure households—9.1 million (roughly 50 percent) of the 18 million food insecure households had incomes below the same threshold. However, there was substantial difference in the number of food insecure households higher up the income distribution. In 2022, households with incomes greater than $75,000 accounted for just 3.1 million food insecure households. In 2023, households at the same income levels numbered 3.9 million—a nearly 800,000 increase. Therefore, almost all of the additional one million food insecure households in 2023 were households with incomes greater than $75,000.

Simply put, middle- to high-income households account for a growing share of food insecure households. In 2022, roughly 18 percent of food insecure households had household incomes greater than $75,000 per year; in 2023, that increased to over 21 percent.

To be sure, there are many disadvantaged Americans that struggle to make ends meet and put food on the table for their families—and many assume that the USDA’s food insecurity measure effectively identifies these households. However, data from the USDA’s latest release raises more questions about the meaning of food insecurity and its relationship to economic hardship. That fully one-quarter of food insecure households have incomes in the top three quintiles suggests that the food insecurity measure is not identifying only the most vulnerable families.