CSIS Reviews Implications of the Final U.S. Hunger Report

A new Jan. 6 report from the think tank, CSIS, reviews the recent U.S. Government study about hunger in America, noting that this until-now annual food security or hunger report will no longer be conducted by the US Government which deemed it political and inducing fear.

Caitlin Welsh, the author of this review observes that “the end of the report represents a rupture in long-standing data on food security among Americans, as there is no report that provides the same information to the public and policymakers today.”  This survey had been created with bipartisan support and helped advise Congress about anti-hunger programs.

The USDA Household Food Security in the US publication looks back at 2024 found that roughly 1 in 7 Americans were food insecure, and that “5.4 percent of households experienced very low food security.”  Hunger was not uniform everywhere in the U.S.  For example, 36% of families in the Washington DC area experienced food insecurity in 2024 and “the Greater Boston Food Bank found that in 2024, 37 percent of Massachusetts households faced food insecurity in 2024.”

Welsh writes that food insecurity in the US has in the past tracked the health of the U.S. economy.  In recent years, hunger has increased, in significant part because of increasing retail food prices.  Welsh says “alongside elevated food prices, experts may be right to assume a continued rise in food insecurity in 2025.  In 2026, cuts in the SNAP program enacted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, were estimated to eliminate SNAP assistance for millions of Americans, may further increase food insecurity among U.S. families.”

CSIS is the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an independent, non-partisan think tank based in Washington, DC.  See:  https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-us-hunger-data-what-we-lose-termination-usdas-household-food-security-united-states

For the full US Department of Agriculture report, published on Dec. 30, 2025, see:  https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publications/113623/ERR-358.pdf?v=89918  authored by Matthew P. Rabbitt, Madeline Reed-Jones, Laura J. Hales, Shellye Suttles, and Michael P. Burke who are economists in the Economic Research Service of USDA.

See also, the related Hunger Notes article on this issue by Kathy Goss:  https://www.worldhunger.org/united-states-cancels-household-food-security-report/