Food security is defined by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) as “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.” This indicator of economic well-being has been measured annually for decades in the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS) using the validated and rigorously tested 18-item Household Food Security Scale.

However, in September 2025, the USDA canceled the annual collection of household food security data in the CPS-FSS. The more than 25 years of CPS data on food security has allowed researchers to document trends over time, study the causes and consequences of food insecurity, and evaluate the impact of economic changes, policy changes, and events like recessions or the COVID-19 pandemic on food security.

This brief clarifies important distinctions among food access measures that are frequently treated as interchangeable, and it 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.

Why This Matters

Household experiences accessing food is an indicator of well-being and an important factor in understanding economic hardship, nutrition, and health, and has implications for the healthy development of children. Given its importance, many different surveys attempt to collect information on food access, sometimes using the established food security scale and other times using alternative measures such as food insufficiency, food hardship, and hunger. While these other measures are related to food security, they are distinct and, in most cases, have not gone through the same rigorous testing. The distinctions between food security and other food access measures are sometimes not made in research and are frequently ignored altogether in the popular press. As a result, the public as well as other researchers can easily become confused about what is known about the prevalence, causes, and consequences associated with varying measures. To provide additional clarity to the field, we recommend specific terminology for consideration when presenting findings based on different measures of food access.