Monitoring Food Hardship

In 2025, the Trump administration cancelled the Food Security Supplement to the December Current Population Survey (CPS-FSS), which forms the basis for a longstanding annual report on food security. These data are needed to track how vulnerable families are faring in a time of rising prices, economic uncertainty, and cuts to welfare programs. In late 2025, social policy scholar Natasha Pilkauskas and economist Helen Levy, along with an interdisciplinary team of experts, began collecting nationally representative monthly data on food (in)sufficiency in order to continue tracking key outcomes over time. RSF funds will allow Pilkauskas, Levy, social policy scholar H. Luke Shaefer, economist Thomas Crossley, and sociologist Noura Insolera to continue collecting and analyzing the data for an additional two years after current funding runs out in August 2026. They will draw on data from the Michigan Survey of Consumers for their study.