food (in)security in the US

[Doug Henwood]

Household Food Security in the United States.  Mark Nord is a 
co-author on the advance report for the Food and Nutrition Service 
study "Household Food Security in the United States, 1995-1998."  The 
Current Population Survey data used by the study were funded by the 
Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program (FANRP).  The study's 
preliminary estimates indicate that during the 12 months ending in 
August 1998, nearly 93 million U.S. households (89.8 percent of all 
households) were food secure, meaning they had access at all times to 
enough food for an active healthy life, with no need for recourse to 
emergency food sources or other extraordinary coping behaviors to 
meet their basic food needs.  Correspondingly, the group that was 
food-insecure contained 10.5 million U.S. households (10.2 percent of 
all households) with 36 million persons living in them.  Children 
were 40 percent of the group.  Among the estimated 10.5 million 
households that experienced some degree of food!

   insecurity in 1998, 3.7 million households reached a level of 
severity great enough that one or more households' members were 
hungry at least sometime during the period due to inadequate 
resources for food.  Together, some 6.6 million adults and 3.4 
million children lived in such households in 1998.  The report was 
released on July 14.

Complete report available at:
http://www.fns.usda.gov/oane/MENU/Published/FSP/FSP.HTM