The Impact of Coronavirus on Food Insecurity in the United States of America

Background

In early 2020, Coronavirus (COVID-19) began its spread across the United States of America. Due to lack of access to sufficient food because of limited financial resources brought on by an economic recession, this report will provide an analysis regarding the change in food security due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the information included in this report comes from data provided by Feeding America. Studies from Feeding America use publicly available state and local data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor and Statistics. Supplemental data was provided by the Community Food Bank of New Jersey (CFBNJ)

Hypothesis

In this report I am hypothesizing that food insecurity will increase in every state due to the lasting impact of COVID-19 during 2020. I believe that high rates of food insecurity will be linked to the increase in unemployment rates caused by the various shutdowns that occured as the pandemic spread. This report will focus on the two states that experienced the highest annual unemployment change from 2019 to the projected 2021 rate (New Jersey and Texas). The last aspect of this report will focus specifically on New Jersey which was found to have the county with the highest change in unemployment as well as the highest rate of food insecurity. I am hypothesizing that while Atlantic County, New Jersey suffered greatly during 2020 as a result of the pandemic, in 2021 the county will see a decrease in food insecurity as economies continue to open and life begins to return to the more familiar pre-pandemic norm.

Analysis

Food Insecurity and Change in Unemployment Nationally:

In an effort to gain a general sense of the climate in relation to unemployment rate and food insecurity, this map illustrates the average adjusted annual unemployment change. Obtained through data published by Feeding America, this change rate assumes a national annual unemployment rate for 2020 of 9.2% (5.5 percentage points higher than 2019), a national annual unemployment rate for 2021 of 6.7% (3.0 percentage points higher than 2019), a national annual poverty rate for 2020 of 11.1% (0.6 percentage points higher than 2019), and a national annual poverty rate for 2021 of 12.0% (1.5 percentage points higher than 2019). This map clearly indicates New Jersey and Texas as having a significantly large change in annual unemployment since 2019.

This map is dual-axis and thus has two layers of variables, the colors on the face of the map are indicative of the average adjusted annual unemployment change as mentioned previously. The second layer looks at trends of where there are low, medium, and high levels of the rate of food insecurity. The methodology behind creating this filter was as follows: Using the projected level of food insecurity rate from the ‘counties-2021’ column, I was able to categorize the rates into low, medium, and high. The method I used for categorizing was based off information published by Feeding America. Feeding America had estimated rates of county food insecurity rates from 4% to 30%. Using that information, I created a filter with the following code:

IF [2021 Food Insecurity %] < .10 THEN ‘Low’

ELSEIF [2021 Food Insecurity %] <= .15 THEN ‘Medium’

ELSEIF [2021 Food Insecurity %] >.16 THEN ‘High’

ELSE ‘Error’

END

This visualization indicates higher rates of food insecurity predominantly in Southern counties and lower rates of food insecurity among counties in the North, more specifically, Midwestern counties. Interestingly, there were no counties that were visible in Texas when on the ‘Low’ filter. However, New Jersey had a handful of counties indicated using the ‘Low’ filter. This was ultimately a deciding factor in continuing to focus on New Jersey throughout this report. The disparities between counties in the same state led to the exploration of the impact of COVID-19 on different industries.

Food Insecurity - New Jersey & Texas:

In the visualization above it is clear to see New Jersey and Texas have a much higher average adjusted annual unemployment change than other states in the continental U.S. In order to explore this further, I created a bar chart that focuses in on New Jersey and Texas’ food insecurity rates over the course of 2019, 2020, and projected 2021. As illustrated, both states saw a large increase in food insecurity in 2020, which can be assumed was caused by the pandemic.

In the first visualization, both of these states stood out as having the highest average adjusted annual unemployment change. Interestingly, the projection for food insecurity in 2021 decreases in both states. This finding sparked curiousity, as these states were clearly hit hard during the pandemic and yet it was projected that food insecurity would still decrease in 2021. This led to the next data visualizaation that connects to the hypothesis that food insecurity in the continental U.S. would see an overall decrease in 2021 even in the wake of Coronavirus. Based off of the visualization to the right which illustrates the average rate of food insecurity in every continental U.S. state, it is evident that New Jersey and Texas are following the same trend of every other state in the country.

To further explore New Jersey and Texas, I created a layered map that illustrates the food insecurity rates depicted in the last chart, combined with the average adjusted annual unemployment change. To the right of the map, there is a chart that demonstrates the food insecurity rate in 2020 which was the year the pandemic was most impactful to food security according to the data. Using the information provided from these visualizations, I decided to focus on Atlantic County, New Jersey. This county had the highest rate of both food insecurity in 2020 as well as the highest adjusted annual unemployment change.

Atlantic County, New Jersey:

This bar chart illustrates the change in food insecurity in New Jersey counties from 2018 to the projected food insecurity rate in 2020. (The data used in this graph was obtained through a CFBNJ Special Report). While every county experienced an increase in food insecurity, it is evident that some counties were hit harder than others. Atlantic County had the highest projected rate of food insecurity at 18.2%, an 11.4% percent increase in food insecurity since 2018. Pre-pandemic Atlantic County had the forth-highest food insecurity rate in the state. This can be directly linked to the unemployment rate that was rapidly increasing as the impact of the pandemic halted the opennings .

Based off of information obtained in the report noted above, COVID-related unemployment, especially among workers in the leisure, hospitality and service industries where research has shown vulnerability to food insecurity is especially high is projected to have this disproportionate impact on food insecurity in Atlantic County. This leads to estimates of more than 1 in 6 residents experiencing food insecurity this year.

Conclusion

Before the start of the pandemic, national overall food insecurity reached its lowest point since it began being measured in the 1990s. The results of the COVID-19 pandemic were the first economic recession in the United States since 2007. The unemployment rate in April 2020 was 14.7% which was the highest monthly increase unemployment rate since 1948 when this type of data was first collected.

Feeding America is projecting that 42 million people (1 in 8), including 13 million children (1 in 6), may experience food insecurity in 2021. While it is likely that economic conditions will continue to improve as more people become vaccinated and industries are able to recover from shutdowns, according to Feeding America, it will take continued support and public-private partnership across the government, the private sector, and the charitable food system to achieve the common goal where no person in America faces food insecurity.

In regard to Atlantic County, New Jersey, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics highlights the 12-month percent change in unemployment in the leisure and hospitality industry to be higher than the change in unemployment in any of the other industries (i.e. mining, logging, and construction, manufacturing, information, financial activities, etc.).

In relation to the hypothesis, this report was able to prove that the rate of food insecurity in the United States increased in every state due to the impacts of COVID-19. Through delving deeper into the county with the highest rate of food insecurity as well as the highest adjusted annual unemployment change, it became evident that food insecurity was directly linked with the impact of industry shutdowns. Upon examining trends in every state in the continental U.S. we can remain hopeful that these rates of food insecurity will continue to decrease.