Greetings—

More than one in four nonelderly adults reported that their households experienced food insecurity in 2024, Urban Institute researchers find in a new report. The share of adults experiencing food insecurity was unchanged from 2023 and continued to be higher than the share reported in 2019.

Using data from Urban’s Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey, a nationally representative survey of adults ages 18 to 64, the researchers find that:

Food hardship was most common among groups that may be disproportionately affected by cuts to SNAP, including households with children ages 0-5 (34.2 percent) or school-aged children ages 6-17 (31.5 percent); Black and Hispanic/Latinx adults (38.6 and 34.6 percent); and adults with disabilities (52.1 percent).
More than 1 in 6 adults (17.6 percent) reported their households received charitable food in 2024, a share that was statistically unchanged from 2023. The rate of charitable food receipt has persisted above its 2019 level (12.1 percent) for the past five years.
Groups that disproportionately experienced food insecurity also reported high rates of receiving charitable food, including Black and Hispanic/Latinx adults (30.6 percent and 25.4 percent) and adults with disabilities (34.9 percent)

“These findings underscore the deep challenges US households face in meeting basic food needs,” the researchers write. “Potential cuts to federal nutrition programs such as SNAP, or to those that supply food to the nation’s food banks and their partners, could push rates of hardship even higher and further strain the charitable food system.”

Read the report to learn more. If you have questions for the research team, please reply to this email.

Thanks,