More of your neighbors may be food insecure than you realize. The fourth annual Hunger Report by the Capital Area Food Bank finds 32 percent of the DMV’s population experienced food insecurity between May 2022 and April 2023. That’s just 1 percent less than than the year before.
For Prince William County, the prevalence of food insecurity is 36 percent. It’s 31 percent in Alexandria, 24 percent in Fairfax County, and 17 percent in Arlington County, according to Hunger Report 2023.
The USDA defines food insecurity as “a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life,” and people in the report who are referred to as food insecure were identified as having one or more food-related hardships during the last year.
The report said that “multiple, often compounding factors that have driven food insecurity to remain at staggeringly high levels across the region.”
Race, households with children, chronic health conditions, and the lingering effects of the pandemic are among those factors, as well as income levels.
While 82 percent of those who identify as food insecure earned $83,000 a year or less, 51 percent had either some college education (26 percent) or a college degree or higher (25 percent). Thirty eight percent had a high school education, and 10 percent had less education. Twelve percent of the food insecure made between $83,000 and $164,000 a year, and 5 percent made more.
“Within the food insecure population, 44 percent of individuals were Black, and 27 percent were Hispanic, while only 18 percent were white,” the report said.
The Capital Food Bank findings said the educational attainment level of the food insecure “underscores the need for greater equity in hiring, as well as increased access to degrees and certifications that align with post-pandemic job opportunities in the region.”
Across the DMV, 10 percent of children experienced food insecurity. Most of the time, it was adults who were food insecure. “This suggests that adults prioritize feeding the children first and — at least some of the time — are sacrificing their own food to do so. … Another key factor influencing this lower rate was universal access to free meals in public schools regardless of income, which ended in September 2022,” the report said.
Recommendations for reducing the region’s food insecurity levels include increasing accessibility to emergency food assistance; strengthening government programs that have been effective, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; increasing efforts to help the food insecure improve their diets to reduce chronic diet-related illnesses; and reducing barriers so that services to address poverty are integrated together.
The survey done by NORC at the University of Chicago, with funding from the food bank, involved 5,261 adults, include at least 750 in each of the following jurisdictions: Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William counties and the City of Alexandria. The margin of error for the jurisdictions ranged from 5.6 to 6.1 percent.
Feature image, stock.adobe.com
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