New paper tracks changes to food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic

ANN ARBOR — The COVID-19 pandemic threw the world into chaos in wide-ranging and unexpected ways. The virus affected elements of societal infrastructure, both large and small, and disrupted key services and systems as different areas of the country handled shutdowns in different ways. Supply chains and distribution of all kinds of goods and services, including food, were disrupted, potentially leading to significant problems with food insecurity.

But did those disruptions actually cause an increase in food insecurity in America? A new paper, titled “New and Recurring Food Insecurity During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic,” finds that food insecurity did change during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, but perhaps not in ways that you would expect.

Noura Insolera, assistant research scientist at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and assistant director of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is one of the paper’s authors. According to Insolera, food insecurity actually decreased during the height of the pandemic, but began to rise again later.

“Studies showed that food insecurity actually decreased in 2021, which was shocking because supply chains and unemployment were so unpredictable,” she said. “If you compared 2021 and 2023 data, you’d say we were doing better in 2021 than in 2023.. But it increased significantly in 2023, much higher than where it was pre-pandemic in 2019.”

That’s a concern, she argued, because the data indicates that efforts to prevent that kind of slide into food insecurity was working. Public programs designed to keep families from being or becoming food insecure had worked, but once they expired, food insecurity rose again.  

The paper uses the United States Department of Agriculture’s household food security survey module, which goes into the PSID every two years. Within the parameters of the module, people who are food insecure have either had a change in their food purchasing and eating habits, or may be actively skipping meals to either save money or allow their children to eat. 

The PSID first studied food security in the late 1990s and resumed its work on the subject in 2015, collecting new data every two years, with data from 2019, 2021, and 2023 being used for this paper.

“We were collecting data up until the end of December 2019, so truly before COVID hit the United States,” Insolera said. Then we collected again in 2021 and again in 2023, so we were able to look at the pre-COVID time as a baseline, then look at the same families again in 2021 to see how things had changed, and then again in 2023. Even during a global pandemic when everything was sort of flipped up on its head, food insecurity actually went down.” 

Food insecurity is on the rise again, with 2025 data showing an increase over 2023, presenting lawmakers with an opportunity to reconsider COVID-era policies to address the issue, especially as the ramifications of the pandemic stretch into the future.

“The policy changes that occurred in 2023 were certainly detrimental to American families, and we’ve been able to see that in our data,” Insolera said. “Moving forward to the data we’re collecting now, we’ll be able to see what impacts those changes have in the long run.”

The paper, “New and Recurring Food Insecurity During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic,” is available in full from JAMA Health Forum.

Watch Noura Insolera discuss food insecurity in this related video.

Contact: Jon Meerdink ([email protected])