Description/Abstract

The U.S. Department of Agriculture measures food insecurity based on whether households had problems affording food during the last twelve months. Based on the current definition, in 2023 9.2% of households with adults ages 60 and older were food insecure. But there are many problems with the existing definition for accurately capturing food insecurity among older adults.

Based on the book, Food for Thought: Understanding Older Adults Food Insecurity, this brief summarizes those limitations, noting that existing measures do not account for barriers that are common among older adults, such as mobility, physical distance, and transportation barriers.

Document Type

Research Brief

Keywords

Older adults, food insecurity, food insecurity measurement

Disciplines

Food Studies | Gerontology | Health Policy | Public Affairs | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration

Date

9-9-2025

Language

English

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by Grant #1908-17412 to Madonna Harrington Meyer and Grant #1905-15081 to Colleen Heflin from the Russell Sage Foundation. All opinions expressed are those of the principal investigator(s) alone and should not be construed as representing the opinions of the Foundation. Our thanks to Camille Bagin, Claire Pendergrast, Sarah Reilly, Winston Scott, Rebecca Wang, Shanel Khaliq, Frank Sarfo, Anna Delapaz, Gabriella Alphonso, Clay Fannin, Siobhan O’Keefe, Hyojeong Kim, Julia Stafford, Xiaohan Sun, Lauryn Quick, Yuwei Zhang, and Dongmei Zuo for their data and research assistance. Our thanks to Suzanne Nichols, our editors at the Russell Sage Foundation, Shannon Monnat, and Alyssa Kirk for editorial assistance.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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