The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has sponsored the Census Bureau’s collection of data on food security through a supplement to the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS) each year between 1995 to 2024. In the fall of 2025, USDA suspended the collection of the CPS-FSS.
This brief summarizes the availability, key strengths, and limitations, of national-level survey data on food security, and compares them to the CPS-FSS. There are eight additional national-level surveys that, as recently as 2025, collected data on food security using one of the USDA food security modules, that we detail in this brief:
- Consumer Food Insights (CFI)
- Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS)
- National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)
- National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)
- Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)
- Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)
- Understanding America Survey (UAS)
- Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey (WBNS)
Why This Matters
Each survey differs across core dimensions including the measure of food security being used, survey methods, populations covered, and other aspects. These dimensions are all likely to have implications for the magnitude of the estimates of food security and comparability to each other and to the benchmark from the CPS-FSS. However, none of the alternative sources of data to estimate food security prevalence rates are adequate substitutes for the CPS-FSS, which is considered the gold standard given its wide coverage of the US population, large sample size, and use of the full 18-item validated food security scale, among other strengths.
It is critically important to understand how these surveys differ in design and context from the CPS-FSS because these design and context factors can impact estimates of food security status. For this reason, comparing estimates of the prevalence of food security from two surveys that have different designs and contexts should be conducted carefully, noting potential sources of differences.
This brief is part of a series being published under the Food Security Data Collaborative, an initiative convening researchers and practitioners interested in furthering food security measurement.
