Despite the continued strength in the top sectors of the economy in 2006, fully 35.5 million Americans – including 12.6 million children – lived in households that couldn’t afford an adequate supply of food, according to food insecurity data released today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Those numbers represent a 390,000-person increase over 2005, although the USDA cautioned that the increase may not be statistically significant.

In New York State, even with the soaring stock market in 2006, the number of hungry and food insecure residents stayed flat. In order to most accurately assess the data, the USDA report compares averages for three-year time periods. In the 2001-2003 time period, an average of 10.0 percent of state households suffered from food insecurity; that figure was 9.8 percent for the 2004-2006 time period. USDA described the change in the state as far too small to be statistically significant.

USDA estimates only the percentage of food insecure households statewide, not the raw number of people who are food insecure, since such raw numbers are somewhat less statistically valid. Still, the New York City Coalition Against Hunger used the USDA data to calculate the best approximation of the numbers, very roughly estimating that the number of people who lived in food insecure households statewide in New York in 2004-2006 averaged 1.891 million people.

“Given that the national and state economy created so much wealth for the people at the top of the economic ladder last year when these numbers were collected, it is disturbing that hunger and food insecurity remained at these very high levels,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. “The only good news is that Governor Spitzer has taken a number of very positive steps to address the problem. He’s launched a food stamps access initiative for working families, created a Food Policy Council, and joined with the Legislature to increase funding for soup kitchens and food pantries. If these initiatives are implemented in an effective manner over the next year, perhaps we can finally start reducing hunger in the state.”

The full USDA report is available at: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err49/.