docs/us_economy/economy_food_insecurity_county_year

economy_food_insecurity_county_year

Feeding America Map the Meal Gap county food insecurity, 2009-2023. Overall and child (under 18) food insecurity, each as a rate (proportion 0-1) and a person count. The only annual county-year food-insecurity panel; a county-level regression-model estimate calibrated to the CPS Food Security Supplement. CT/AK legacy-geography rows are reallocated to modern successors (geo_basis='crosswalk_estimate').

tier cTier C: Map the Meal Gap is a county-level regression-model estimate (predictors include poverty, unemployment, median income, homeownership, and race/ethnicity from the ACS and BLS) calibrated to the national CPS Food Security Supplement. It is the standard county food-insecurity series but is modeled, with no county-level ground truth.food-insecurityhungerfood-accesssdohmap-the-meal-gap
grain
county-year
years
2009 – 2023
cadence
Annual (released ~2 years after the data year)
overview

overview

~3,140 counties x 15 years (2009-2023). Excludes 17 county-years for three pre-2015 FIPS successions absent from the legacy crosswalk (Wade Hampton AK, Shannon SD, Bedford City VA).

current vintage — 2023

history — Yes — 2009-2023 (one annual release per data year)

provenance

source & licensing

authority
Feeding America
dataset
Map the Meal Gap
license
Feeding America data-use agreement (research/educational use; attribution required)
citation
Feeding America, Map the Meal Gap, 2009-2023 (data years).
schema

fields

nametypedefinition
_ingested_attimestampProvenance — ingest timestamp of the source load.
_ingestor_versionstringProvenance — ingestor version.
_reliability_tierstringProvenance — reliability tier (C).
_source_dataset_idstringProvenance — source dataset id (FEEDING_AMERICA_MMG_COUNTY).
child_food_insecurity_ratefloat64Modeled food-insecurity rate among children under 18 (proportion 0-1).
country_idstringISO alpha-2 country code (always 'US').
county_idkeystring5-character county FIPS code (string, leading zeros preserved).
county_namestringCounty name as published by Feeding America (null for the 2009 vintage).
food_insecurity_ratefloat64Modeled overall food-insecurity rate (proportion 0-1).
geo_basisstring'source' for rows at MMG's native canonical geography; 'crosswalk_estimate' for CT (2009-2021) and AK Valdez-Cordova (2009-2019) legacy-geography rows reallocated to modern successors via us_dimension.crosswalk_legacy_county (population-weighted).
num_food_insecureint64Modeled number of food-insecure persons (overall).
num_food_insecure_childrenint64Modeled number of food-insecure children under 18.
state_idstring2-character state FIPS code (string, leading zeros preserved).
yearkeyint64Data year of the Map the Meal Gap estimate (2009-2023).
relationships

joins

primary key
county_id, year
common joins
not provided
usage

how to use this table

method

Food insecurity rate = modeled share of the population (and, for the child series, of persons under 18) experiencing food insecurity, carried through as published (proportion). Counts are the published food-insecure population. Legacy-geography rows are population- weighted (rates) or population-share-allocated (counts) into modern successors.

do not use for

Sub-county geographies, precise single-year change detection in small counties (model smoothing and ~2-year release lag), or as a direct count (these are modeled estimates).

known issues

Connecticut (legacy 8 counties 09001-09015 through 2021) and the Alaska Valdez-Cordova split (02261 through 2019) span county-equivalent geography changes; those rows are reallocated to modern successors via us_dimension.crosswalk_legacy_county (rates population-weighted, counts split by population share) and flagged geo_basis='crosswalk_estimate'. 2022+ CT and 2020+ AK are reported natively and pass through (geo_basis='source'). Three older successions not yet in the crosswalk — Wade Hampton->Kusilvak AK (02270, to 2014), Shannon->Oglala Lakota SD (46113, to 2014), Bedford City->Bedford County VA (51515, to 2012) — drop ~17 county-years; adding them to the crosswalk recovers these (and closes the same gap in economy_poverty_county_year). county_name is null for the 2009 vintage. Rates are proportions (0-1), not percentages.

last updated · Jul 7, 2026