We analyze food insecurity among households with children younger than age 18 using December 2025 data from the Urban Institute’s Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey (WBNS). We also examine rates of food insecurity over time among working-age adults (ages 18 to 64) living with and without children.
We find that in 2025, food insecurity among adults living with children remained high, with nearly 1 in 3 struggling to afford food. Black and Hispanic adults living with children were significantly more likely to report food insecurity than white adults living with children.
Why This Matters
Food insecurity is associated with multiple challenges for children in the short- and long-term, including higher rates of fair or poor health, hospitalization, and cognitive/developmental delays.
Evidence shows that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps reduce the risk of food insecurity and its associated harms among households with children. But looming changes to SNAP could reduce its availability and effectiveness.
Key Takeaways
- About 1 in 3 adults living with children reported their household was food insecure in 2025 (31.9 percent). This share included 1 in 6 who reported very low food security (16.0 percent), a severe form of food insecurity in which household members experience multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns. Households without children were significantly less likely to report overall food insecurity (20.4 percent).
Source: Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey, December 2025.
Notes: Among adults 18 or older in the last 12 months, living with or without children younger than age 18. The estimates at the top of each stacked bar represent the total share of adults reporting food insecurity in the last 12 months.
*/**/*** Estimates differ significantly from reference group (^adults living with children) at the 0.10/0.05/0.01 level, using two-tailed tests.
- Food insecurity in households of working-age adults with children has remained above 30 percent since 2023. In 2025, the rate of food insecurity (32.0 percent) was markedly higher than that observed between 2020 and 2021 (24 percent and 22.5 percent), when several supports were available to many families with children in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- More than half of households with low incomes (below 200 percent of the federal poverty level) with children were food-insecure (54.0 percent) in 2025. By comparison, roughly a third (35.4 percent) of households with incomes between 200 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level were food insecure in 2025. Though these households struggle to afford food, they are generally not eligible for federal nutrition programs.
- Children were much more likely to live in food-insecure households if the adult survey respondent was Black (42.4 percent) or Hispanic (42.7 percent) than if the respondent was white (25.0 percent).
How We Did It
This analysis draws on data from the December 2025 round of the WBNS, a nationally representative, annual survey of adults that monitors individual and family well-being in the context of a changing safety net. More than 10,000 adults (ages 18 and older) participated.
