Matt Foulkes, Joan Hermsen, Nikki Raedeke, Sandy Rikoon
Background
This atlas assesses the extent of food insecurity in the state of Missouri for 2005. It also begins to gauge how well public programs are doing in meeting the needs of those of our fellow citizens who have difficulty acquiring sufficient amounts and qualities of food. The concept of food security, as the Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program within the United States Department of Agriculture defines it, refers to “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.” Food insecurity in this country is normally due to insufficient resources for food purchases, and the majority of food insecure households avoid hunger by relying on a more narrow range of foods or acquiring food through private and public assistance programs. The USDA reported more than 12.6 million households, and more than 35 million Americans, as having “low food security in 2005." Of these, 3.7 million households comprising nearly 11 million citizens had “very low food security,” meaning the food intake of some household members was reduced and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because of the lack of money and other resources.¹
According to the USDA, food insecurity in Missouri in 2005 affected 271,000 households, or nearly 12 percent of the total in the state. Among children, the percentage is even larger—food security afflicts more than 15 percent of the state’s children, or nearly 200,000 residents below the age of 18. In the more severe case of food insecurity with hunger, state levels have been increasing and now include more than 90,000 households (or 1 of every 25 households in the state) and 74,000 children. Missouri is one of 17 states with rising rates of food insecurity with hunger, and the increase over the first part of this decade is among the highest five in the country.
The costs of food insecurity are economic, social, physical and psychological. For example, the economic costs of food insecurity among adults include income loss, work absenteeism, higher demand for public benefits and social services and increased health care expenditures. Food insecurity and poverty are clearly connected—poverty is the best single predictor of food insecurity, and hunger strongly correlates with lower educational achievement, unemployment and impaired work performance. Recent studies of children show food insecurity and hunger are significant predictors of chronic illness, low birth weight, lower school performance and developmental problems.
To help Missourians gain a greater understanding of the extent and depth of food insecurity and hunger in the state, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia compiled county-level data to provide (1) a snapshot of the extent and depth of food insecurity and hunger (which we refer to as “need” in this atlas) and (2) an assessment of participation in programs intended to mediate food insecurity and hunger needs (labeled as “performance” in this atlas). With the cooperation of many public and private sector agencies and organizations, we identified appropriate variables or indicators that we could use to measure hunger “need” and “performance” for each of Missouri’s 114 counties and St. Louis City. The largest part of this report is the county pages that include the need and performance indicators for each of these 115 units. We also provide maps of selected indicators to show the distribution of data across the state.
We hope this atlas will:
- Raise Missourians’ awareness of the extent and depth of food insecurity and hunger needs in their own locations and in other regions of the state;
- Increase Missourians’ knowledge of the extent of the work of public programs and food banks in their regions and the success of these programs in reaching food insecure populations;
- Reveal geographic patterns, including regional and county-level differences, in hunger need and performance in our state;
- Provide baseline measures of need and performance that can be annually updated and compared to assess trends in need and performance variables; and,
- Help public and private decision-makers assess food insecurity need and program performance as a means for improving the delivery of human, technical, and fiscal resources to residents and regions requiring assistance.
This is a "pilot" publication in two important respects. First, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first publication in Missouri to provide a broad-ranging and in-depth assessment of hunger and hunger alleviation programs at the county level. Nationwide, only a couple of states have undertaken similar projects, and none have compiled the breadth of indicators presented here. We hope this Atlas can serve as a template that will be enriched or improved upon by similar efforts in other states. Second, other groups might well identify different sets of indicators than those described here or might have alternative means of measuring or assessing need and performance. We sincerely hope that dialogue about both our methods and results become part of wider dialogues among all citizens, from those professionally involved in hunger programs to concerned residents of our state.
[1] Prior to the 2005 report, the USDA described households with “very low food security” as “food insecure with hunger” and those with “low food security” as “food insecure”. The labels changed at the recommendation of the Committee on National Statistics (National Research Council, 2006). The criteria by which the USDA classified households remained unchanged, however, and in this atlas we use the older phrases of “food insecure” and “food insecure with hunger”.
Last update: Friday, February 22, 2008
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© Interdisciplinary Center for Food Security,
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