The Urban Institute released Disrupting Food Insecurity, a new data dashboard that provides county-level statistics about food insecurity and a variety of related risk factors. The dashboard provides data about housing costs, physical health, income and employment, median credit scores and debt, education levels, the share of households with children, and race in each U.S. county. Users can compare county data with national, state, and peer-county averages.
The connections between food insecurity and its risk factors show why efforts to address food insecurity must go beyond federal nutrition programs and charitable meals and must confront high housing costs and other causes of economic distress. Along with the dashboard, the Urban Institute provides cross-cutting strategies and interventions tailored to groups of peer counties with similar profiles. NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel served on the advisory board for the project.
The dashboard can be accessed at: https://urbn.is/foodinsecurity
An accompanying brief with strategies for securing food security, including tools for increasing housing affordability, is available at: https://urbn.is/2qwg5Eu