The Senior food insecurity rate in the United States was 7.1% in 2021. Explore a map of senior hunger statistics in the United States at the state and local level.

This map includes New Mexico County data from 2021.Data was obtained from Feeding America. Overall (all ages) Hunger & Poverty in the United States | Map the Meal Gap (feedingamerica.org)

Please find attached the zip file to access the data.

For the eleventh consecutive year, Feeding America conducted our annual Map the Meal Gap study to improve our understanding of food insecurity and food costs at the local level. The most recent release is based on data from 2019. In response to COVID-19, we also released a companion study and interactive map that illustrate the projected impact of the pandemic on local food insecurity in 2020 and 2021. To better assess the current and future state of local food insecurity, it is critical to understand historical variations prior to the pandemic. Only then can we develop effective strategies to reach people at risk of hunger.

According to the Global Hunger Index 2024, which was adopted by the International Food Policy Research Institute, Somalia was the most affected by hunger and malnutrition, with an index of 44.1. Yemen and Chad followed behind. The World Hunger Index combines three indicators: undernourishment, child underweight, and child mortality. Sub-Saharan Africa most affected The index is dominated by countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the region, more than one fifth of the population is undernourished . In terms of individuals, however, South Asia has the highest number of undernourished people. Globally, there are 735 million people that are considered undernourished or starving. A lack of food is increasing in over 20 countries worldwide. Undernourishment worldwide The term malnutrition includes both undernutrition and overnutrition. Undernutrition occurs when an individual cannot maintain normal bodily functions such as growth, recovering from disease, and both learning and physical work. Some conditions such as diarrhea, malaria, and HIV/AIDS can all have a negative impact on undernutrition. Rural and agricultural communities can be especially susceptible to hunger during certain seasons. The annual hunger gap occurs when a family’s food supply may run out before the next season’s harvest is available and can result in malnutrition. Nevertheless, the prevalence of people worldwide that are undernourished has decreased over the last decades, from 18.7 percent in 1990-92 to 9.2 percent in 2022, but it has slightly increased since the outbreak of COVID-19. According to the Global Hunger Index, the reduction of global hunger has stagnated over the past decade.

This dataset measures food availability and access for 76 low- and middle-income countries. The dataset includes annual country-level data on area, yield, production, nonfood use, trade, and consumption for grains and root and tuber crops (combined as R&T in the documentation tables), food aid, total value of imports and exports, gross domestic product, and population compiled from a variety of sources. This dataset is the basis for the International Food Security Assessment 2015-2025 released in June 2015. This annual ERS report projects food availability and access for 76 low- and middle-income countries over a 10-year period. Countries (Spatial Description, continued): Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Resources in this dataset:Resource Title: CSV File for all years and all countries. File Name: gfa25.csvResource Title: International Food Security country data. File Name: GrainDemandProduction.xlsxResource Description: Excel files of individual country data. Please note that these files provide the data in a different layout from the CSV file. This version of the data files was updated 9-2-2021

More up-to-date files may be found at: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/international-food-security.aspx

This year’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) brings us face to face with a grim reality. The toxic cocktail of conflict, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic had already left millions exposed to food price shocks and vulnerable to further crises. Now the war in Ukraine, with its knock-on effects on global supplies of and prices for food, fertilizer, and fuel is turning a crisis into a catastrophe. The 2022 global GHI score shows that progress in tackling hunger has largely halted. Other indicators reveal the tragic scale of the unfolding crisis. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 reported that in 2021 the number of undernourished people, an indicator of chronic hunger, rose to as many as 828 million. Further, according to the Global Report on Food Crises 2022, the number of people facing acute hunger also rose from 2020, reaching nearly 193 million in 2021. These impacts are now playing out across Africa South of the Sahara, South Asia, Central and South America, and beyond. As we face the third global food price crisis in 15 years, it is clearer than ever that our food systems in their current form are inadequate to the task of sustainably ending poverty and hunger. The global food crisis underway now is widely presented as an aftershock caused by the war in Ukraine. The severity and speed of the impacts on hunger have occurred largely, however, because millions of people were already living on the precarious edge of hunger, a legacy of past failures to build more just, sustainable, and resilient food systems. While it is urgent that the international community respond to these escalating humanitarian crises, it must not lose sight of the need for a long-term transformation of food systems. The shocks we have experienced reveal chronic vulnerabilities that will continue to put millions at risk of hunger. Past and current GHI reports highlight these persistent vulnerabilities and shows what actions can address immediate humanitarian needs and kick-start food system transformation. Rather than operating reactively, the international community must take proactive steps to actually make good on its international commitments and pledges, scaling them up and directing them toward emergency measures. Political attention and funding must be targeted toward evidence-based policies and investments that address structural obstacles to food and nutrition security. More high-quality and timely data are also needed so that we can monitor progress in these areas. This year’s GHI report considers one important avenue for food systems transformation: community action that engages local leaders and citizens in improving governance and accountability. The essay by Danielle Resnick provides promising examples from a variety of settings where citizens are finding innovative ways to amplify their voices in food system debates, including by tracking government performance and by engaging in multistakeholder platforms, and keeping decision-makers accountable for addressing food and nutrition insecurity and hunger. Encouragingly, examples of empowerment are just as visible in fragile contexts with high levels of societal fractionalization as they are in more stable settings with longer traditions of local democracy. It is critical to act now to rebuild food security on a new and lasting basis. Failure to do so means sleepwalking into the catastrophic and systematic food crises of the future. Much more can be done to ward off the worst impacts of the current crisis and set deep changes in motion rather than reinforcing the dangerous and unsustainable arrangements we now live with. We must ensure rights-based food systems governance at all levels, building on the initial steps taken at the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit. Governments and development partners must harness local voices, match local governance efforts to conditions and capacities on the ground, and support local leadership through capacity building and funding. Governments must enable citizens to participate fully in developing and monitoring public policies affecting food security while upholding a legal right to food. Prevention pays off. Investments made today can avert future crises that may be even more costly and tragic than what we now face. It has been said that the saddest words are “If only.” We may find ourselves saying, “If only past generations had used their time and resources to do what was needed to end hunger and ensure the right to food for all.” May the next generation not say the same of us.

In 2022, the average one-off donation to wildlife or animal welfare causes was ** U.S. dollars. For hunger and poverty non-profit organizations, the average monthly donation was ** U.S. dollars.