Feeding America has partnered with the Ad Council on a widespread Public Service Announcement campaign regarding the prevalence of domestic hunger. These announcements are currently airing on television, on radio, in print, on billboards, and online. The primary message of the campaign is that one out of every eight Americans struggles with hunger, which is a startling and, for some, hard-to-believe fact, but one that is supported by expansive government research and data.
How we calculated the number
Each autumn, the United States Department of Agriculture releases a report titled Household Food Security in the United States. To differentiate between “hunger” as an inability to have consistent access to food, and the biological usage of “hunger” to refer to the temporary, physical sensation of needing to eat, the USDA coined the term “food insecurity.” They use “food insecurity” to describe individuals who “at times during the year were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.”
The most recent version of this report, released in late 2008, analyzes data the USDA gathered in 2007. There, the USDA reports that 36.2 million people lived in food insecure households in the United States.
Comparing that number to the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate of the nation’s population in 2007 (301,621,157 people) shows that approximately 12 percent of Americans were food insecure that year – which, in fraction form, most closely equals one-eighth.
The USDA’s full report is available at:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/stats_graphs.htm#how_many
Additionally, the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2007 population estimate is available at:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=PEP&_submenuId=&_lang=en&_ts=