More New Yorkers struggle to put food on the table now than during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, new data shows.
One in 10 New Yorkers experienced food insufficiency at the end of 2023, meaning that they didn’t have enough to eat within the previous week, according to data published by the NY Health Foundation, a research group that studies food access. The term food insufficiency represents more severe access issues than food insecurity, which describes individuals who struggle to afford healthy meals over a year-long period.
Food insufficiency in New York has steadily increased since 2021. Roughly 60,000 additional New Yorkers reported low access to healthy food in 2023 compared to the previous year.
Mary Ford, director of research and policy at the NY Health Foundation, said that the rise of food access challenges coincides with the expiration of federal pandemic-era economic relief programs, including public food assistance emergency allotments, free school meals and expanded tax credits.
For example, the expanded child tax credit, which gave families up to an additional $3,600 per kid, expired in December 2021. Food insufficiency among New York households with kids spiked to 20% just one month later.
“All of the work of some of those economic relief programs has been kind of erased in the last two years,” Ford said.
Rising food insufficiency is compounded by widening racial disparities. Nearly 20% of Black New Yorkers and 18% of Hispanic New Yorkers reported food insufficiency in 2023. White and Asian New Yorkers, however, reported insufficiency at rates of 7% and 8%, the data shows.
Ford said that enacting economic relief policies could ease food access challenges. She pointed to free school meals, expanding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and a successful rollout of the new federal summer EBT program that provides additional funds to low-income families with kids outside of the school year.
The foundation obtained data for its food insufficiency report from a U.S. Census survey conducted between May 2020 and October 2023.
NY Health Foundation, based in Midtown, is a private foundation that publishes research on public health topics including healthy food access and primary care. The organization was founded in 2007.
Amanda D'Ambrosio , 2024-04-05 11:33:03
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