Making sense of official household food insecurity statistics from Canada and the United States

Household food insecurity in Canada and the United States has been monitored using the same measurement tool, but the official statistics released in each country are not directly comparable.

In both, Canada and the United States, the problem of household food insecurity has been monitored in large population-based surveys using the 18-item Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) for more than two decades. The HFSSM consists of 18 questions about experiences of food deprivation over the past 12 months. These experiences range in severity from worrying about running out of food to going whole days without eating, all due to financial constraints.

When Canada first began administering the HFSSM in 2004, researchers compared the prevalence of food insecurity between Canada and the United States, revealing some noteworthy differences between the two countries. More recently, shifting differences in prevalence between the two countries have sparked growing interest among diverse knowledge users.

However, several differences exist between the two countries in terms of the administration and processing of the module, the estimation of food insecurity statistics, and the design of the surveys administering the module. These differences mean official household food insecurity statistics released in each country cannot be directly compared.

Differences that prevent direct comparisons of official food insecurity statistics released in Canada and the United States

Different classification thresholds to determine food insecurity

The biggest difference between the two countries is their application of different classification thresholds to determine which households are food-secure and which households are food-insecure. The United States applies more conservative thresholds than Canada to define food insecurity. This means that many households classified as food-secure under the US approach would be classified as food-insecure under Canada’s approach.

With Canada’s classification thresholds, households can be considered food secure or in one of 3 categories of food insecurity:

Marginal food insecurity: Worry about running out of food and/or limited food selection due to a lack of money for food.

Moderate food insecurity: Compromise in quality and/or quantity of food due to a lack of money for food.

Severe food insecurity: Miss meals, reduce food intake, and at the most extreme go day(s) without food.

In Canada, household food insecurity statistics include marginal, moderate, and severe food insecurity.

Different units of analysis

Another important difference between the two countries is the unit of analysis used to estimate food insecurity statistics. In the United States, the statistics represent the percent of households reporting food insecurity. In contrast, Statistics Canada publishes the percent of Canadians living in food-insecure households.

These two differences can be addressed by applying Canada’s classification thresholds to publicly available US data and by estimating the percent of Americans living in food-insecure households. With these modifications, US food insecurity prevalence estimates are 8 to 10 percentage points higher than the statistics released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) between 2018 and 2024.

There are three other notable differences between Canada and the United States that affect the comparability of estimates, even after applying Canada’s methodology to US data. However, these differences cannot be easily addressed.

Different approaches to administering the module

The population-based surveys used in Canada and the United States differ in terms of which interviewed households get to answer the HFSSM.

In Canada, the module is administered to all households interviewed in the Canadian Income Survey (CIS).

In the United States, the module is administered to all households interviewed for the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement (CPS-FSS) with self-reported income below 185% of the US poverty line. For all other interviewed US households, the module is only administered if they responded affirmatively to at least one of two screening questions, and those who are not administered the module are automatically assumed to be fully food-secure (no affirmative answer to the module).

There has been a marked increase in food insecurity among middle-income Canadian households in recent years. Any similar pattern in the United States may have been masked by their practice of not systematically assessing the food insecurity status of households with incomes above 185% of their poverty line.

Different approaches in handling missing information

The two countries handle differently households with missing responses to the HFSSM.

Statistics Canada applies an imputation methodology so a food insecurity status can be determined for every household interviewed in the CIS with one or more missing responses to the module. The imputation strategy appears to slightly increase food insecurity prevalence compared to a prevalence estimated by excluding households with missing response(s).

In the United States, households with one or more missing responses to the module are excluded from the estimation of the prevalence.

Different time periods covered by statistics labelled with the same year

The timing of the interviews for the two countries’ population-based surveys differs.

In Canada, the interviews of the CIS are generally conducted from January to June of the year following the survey reference year (e.g., January to June of 2025 for the 2024 CIS)^a.

In the United States, all interviews in the CPS-FSS are conducted in December of the survey reference year (e.g., December 2024 for the 2024 CPS-FSS).

This difference means the time period covered by the 12-month food insecurity measurement in Canada and the United States are not synchronous despite the statistics having the same year label.

Improving comparability by applying Canada’s classification and estimation methodology to US data

Despite these additional differences that cannot be easily addressed, applying Canada’s classification thresholds and unit of analysis to US data improves comparability between the two countries and allows to examine differences in food insecurity trends over time.

The trends suggest Canada experienced larger year-to-year increases in food insecurity than the United States since 2022. Research is needed to better understand why food insecurity prevalence in two countries may have followed different trajectory in recent years.

The US government announced the termination of food insecurity monitoring in September 2025, so there will be no update to the US statistics presented in this blog. Nonetheless, household food insecurity remains an important public health problem in Canada and the United States.

 

Note

a. PROOF characterizes food insecurity statistics using the year the food insecurity data was collected instead of using the survey reference year of the CIS.

Although the application of Canada’s classification and estimation methodology to publicly available US data improve the comparability between the two countries, important differences still exist in the design of the surveys administering the module and the administration and processing of the module in the two countries. These differences cannot be easily addressed, and caution should be used when interpreting the direction and magnitude of the differences in food insecurity statistics between the two countries.