Hunger Statistics

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A few global statistics
A global hunger report
Facts about hunger in the US

A Few Global Statistics

Note: Since January of 2025, global humanitarian aid has been thrown into chaos, and that includes statistics. The story above describes some of the crises faced by agencies and individuals who are trying to see that all God’s people have food security. There are many numbers floating around, but many of them are no longer accurate. It usually takes a year or so for analyses to be completed and the numbers tabulated.

This year, the numbers will be even further off, because agencies are fighting to hold back the tide of emergencies caused by US cuts and those of other former donor countries. Here are a few statistics from United Nations programs that we think are somewhat current. Some of the numbers are almost certainly much higher than the reality.

• In sixty-seven countries, 319 million people are facing acute hunger. –World Food Programme

• Although the numbers have gone down in some countries in the last year, other countries face profound food insecurity. Five countries—Mali, Sudan, South Sudan, Gaza and Haiti—face outright famine. –World Food Programme

• Approximately 673 million people faced some level of food insecurity in 2024. –Food and Agriculture Organisation

• Some 673 million people were undernourished in 2024, a slight improvement from 2023 (695 million), but still far above pre-pandemic levels. –Action Against Hunger, UN report

• Some 2.3 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure, including 545 million in low-income countries—a 17 percent increase since 2019. –Action Against Hunger, UN report

• More than 1 billion people in Africa cannot afford a healthy diet, a sharp rise from 864 million in 2019. –Action Against Hunger, UN report

• Food prices have surged, driving the average cost of a healthy diet to $4.46 per person per day—up from $4.01 in 2022. –Action Against Hunger, UN report

• The number of people unable to afford a healthy diet globally stands at 2.6 billion, or nearly one in three people worldwide. –Action Against Hunger, UN report

This compilation was printed in the 2026 Sacred Seasons Hunger Emphasis packet, “Where Is the Balm?”

Hunger in the World Today

by Katie Cook

A History of Ups and Downs

For years, three United Nations agencies—the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)—have reported hunger and malnutrition as the biggest health risks in the world.

The number of deaths from hunger-related causes is greater than those from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. The main causes of hunger in the past few decades have been poverty, natural disasters, armed conflict, global climate change and the displacement of people.

In the final quarter of the 20th century, humanity was gaining ground against hunger, its oldest enemy. From 1970-1997, the number of hungry people dropped from 959 million to 791 million. This was mainly the result of dramatic progress in reducing the number of undernourished people in China and India.

In the second half of the 1990s, however, the number of chronically hungry people in developing countries started to increase at a rate of almost 4 million per year.

By 2001-2003, the total number of undernourished people worldwide had risen to 854 million. This included 820 million in developing countries, 25 million in countries in transition, and 9 million in industrialized countries.

In 2007-2008, one in seven people did not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life. But the worst was yet to come. The petroleum crisis of 2008, brought on largely by the war in Iraq, caused food prices to spike and set the anti-hunger movement back a decade or more.

That situation was worsened by floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and extended droughts across the globe. That year saw a number of riots in countries where the scarcity of food grew as the prices of food skyrocketed.

Although fewer people have died from hunger-related causes in the past few years, more and more people are at risk for food insecurity and undernourishment.

Member nations of the United Nations resolved in 2015 that they would work to end world hunger by 2030. That is not going to happen. In 2016, for the first time since the year 2000, the number of food-insecure people started to rise. It has been rising ever since.

The world has faced major global hunger crises for several years. The usual causes—armed conflict and climate change (and the displacement both of those realities cause), along with drastically increasing economic inequality—were already causing relief and development agencies to struggle to make inroads.

Then, in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated the problem and, the next year, the Russian invasion of Ukraine threw the world’s supply chain into further chaos. Then, earlier this year, the US administration made huge, sweeping cuts in funding for all humanitarian aid.

An Unprecedented Global Crisis

The US is not the only donor nation that is turning inward. The United Nations recently endeavored to organize fundraising to avert famine in Yemen and fell drastically short of its goal. In fact, the US, while rethinking some of the earlier cuts in aid last spring, refused to reinstate any funding for Yemen, stating that the aid would only fall into the hands of terrorists.

At this writing, the people in five countries—Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti and Mali—not only face intense food insecurity, but are, according to the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme (WFP), in the throes of “catastrophic hunger.” They are on the brink of famine.¹This includes 1.9 million people. WFP reported earlier this year that famine has been confirmed in Zamzam camp in northern Sudan, and, just before press time, famine was confirmed in Gaza.

At the annual World Health Assembly early this summer, Mike Ryan of the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) described the situation in Gaza, responding to claims of Israeli representatives that the Palestinian organization Hamas was “misappropriating” food aid in Gaza. Stating flatly that that truckloads of WHO supplies were even not being allowed into Gaza, Ryan said that, according to the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), Gaza had been classified as IPC5. This classification indicates that famine is imminent.

The IPC defines famine as a situation in which at least one in five households in an area faces an extreme lack of food, leading to starvation and destitution, which in turn leads to extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition and death.² The WHO’s Mike Ryan described famine this way: “Do you know what IPC5 means? It means they will die immediately unless they receive food and assistance.”

The situation in Gaza has only worsened for hundreds of thousands of people over the summer.

And this is only one story.

The WFP had aimed to provide food and nutrition assistance to 123 million people in 2025, which was already expected to be a year of unrelenting humanitarian needs, driven by escalating conflicts and climate and economic shocks. Now it is working through a 40 percent reduction in funds from the US as part of the Trump administration’s “America First” agenda.

Up to 16.7 million people have already been affected by these cuts in 2025. As mentioned above, funding for Yemen and Afghanistan face the deepest cuts, with US officials claiming that terrorist groups are benefiting from humanitarian food aid.

What’s Being Done to Help & What Needs to Happen

Global efforts have been known to alleviate the worst of these tragedies. The World Food Programme describes a coordinated effort from governments, financial institutions, the private sector and international partners that pulled the people of Somalia back from famine in 2022. We know it can be done.

The first challenge involves peacebuilding efforts to ensure safe and unrestricted access across borders and conflict lines. In Gaza, Israeli troops are severely restricting the delivery of life-saving food and medical supplies, citing that Hamas is appropriating it. Sadly, in many countries, terrorist groups like Al Shabaab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Houthis in and around Yemen prevent the populations from accessing food aid.

Skilled diplomacy is necessary to save lives and prevent the hunger catastrophe from spreading even further. However, this only happens when the international community comes together.

The next step is to work to avert the underlying causes of hunger. WFP has made a new priority of working to build resilience, adapt to climate change, promote good nutrition and improve food systems. This has yielded good results in 18 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean as of 2023.³ WFP is also working with governments in 83 countries, through a rural initiative, to boost or build national safety nets and nutrition-sensitive social protection.⁴

Don’t People Want to Help?

Thirty years ago, David Beckmann, then president of Bread for the World, said, “We have the resources to end hunger. We just lack the political will.” Dominic MacSorley, the former CEO of Concern Worldwide, agrees:

Despite all that humanitarian assistance is achieving, and its extraordinary impact, it is falling short. The combination of new and unprecedented levels of need and the inadequate levels of humanitarian funding has put us on course for great tragic and avoidable loss of life. This is inexcusable. No one should die because of a lack of money or will…. The knowledge, resources and capacity exist to end global hunger by 2030, the goal set by the United Nations. However, that will not come close to happening without renewed urgency and resolve.

–Sources: UN World Food Programme, UN World Health Organisation, British Broadcasting Corporation, Devex, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, Concern Worldwide.

Endnotes

Contact seedseditor1@gmail.com or see page 9 of the 2025 Sacred Seasons Hunger Emphasis packet for a communion service that highlights these countries.
The IPC plays a critical role in identifying famine conditions and informing the response needed to save millions of lives. The IPC is now the primary mechanism the international community uses to analyze data and arrive at a conclusion whether famine is happening or projected to occur in a country. Analyses are based on evidence gathered by a wide range of partners and technical consensus among multiple stakeholders.
Most of the figures that are available now are from 2023 and 2024, which means we won’t know the full impact of 2025 cuts for some time to come.
Visit www.wfp.org for more information about WFP’s R4 Rural Resilience initiative. See also “Turning the Tide of Climate Change in Oromia, Ethiopia: Building Livelihoods for Resilience” by Sara Alexander, Hunger News & Hope, Vol 23 No 1, Spring 2023, page 5 (www.seedspublishers.org/news).

This compilation was printed in the 2025 Sacred Seasons Hunger Emphasis packet, “Where Is the Balm?”

Hunger in the US

Note: It is easy to forget the precise definition of food security and food-insecure households, so we have provided definitions from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the sidebar on this page. For a more extensive hunger glossary, see page 27.

Statistics about hunger and poverty in the US take at least a year to collect and compile, so that most of the statistics you see at any given time are not current. Most of the statistics we have now—from agencies like the USDA, Feeding America, and Food Research and Action Center (FRAC)—are from 2023. US food insecurity numbers have been on the rise since 2021.

In January of this year, the US White House implemented deep cuts in domestic food assistance. That, combined with increasing costs of food and other necessities, is profoundly affecting people across the coountry. We have few ways of tracking the newer numbers in time for this worship packet.

However, we do know—from anecdotal reports coming in from food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens and other assistance agencies—that the number of food-insecure households is spiking. The director of one assistance program said that they are seeing an increasing number of what they call “the working poor,” people who work at least one full-time job but still can’t make ends meet.

Below are some statistics about hunger in the US. As you read them, please bear in mind that the situation is probably worse in most cases.

Some 86.5 percent, or 114.6 million, of US households were food secure throughout 2023. The prevalence of food security that year was statistically significantly lower than the 87.2 percent (115.8 million) in 2022. –USDA Economic Research Service
Some 8.4 percent, or 11.2 million, of US households had low food security in 2023. –USDA Economic Research Service
Some 5.1 percent (6.8 million or one in 20) of US households had very low food security at some time during 2023. This means the households reported regularly skipping meals or reducing intake because they could not afford more food. –USDA Economic Research Service, FRAC
There are hungry people in every county in the US. Food insecurity exists in all 3,144 counties and county equivalents as well as all 435 congressional districts in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. –Feeding America
One in five, or 13 million, children are food insecure. This is the highest number of at-risk children in years. –Feeding America
In the last two years, almost 50 million people turned to food banks for help. This represents one in seven households. –Feeding America, FRAC
Estimated food insecurity levels vary across regions, influenced by factors like unemployment and poverty as well as systems and policies that prevent certain households and communities from accessing the food they need. –Feeding America
Child food insecurity rates reach almost 50 percent in some counties. –Feeding America
Rural counties make up 62 percent of all US counties, but nine out of 10 counties with high food insecurity are rural. –Feeding America
The prevalence of food insecurity varied considerably by state, ranging from 7.4 percent in New Hampshire to 18.9 percent in Arkansas (for the three-year period of 2021–2023). Eight out of 10 high food insecurity counties are in the US South. –Feeding America, FRAC
Nearly 50 percent of individuals experiencing food insecurity may not qualify for SNAP benefits due to program eligibility restrictions based on household income. (This will be higher now, and the people receiving SNAP will have had their benefits slashed.) –Feeding America
Meal costs vary significantly by county, ranging from $2.91 to $6.67, showcasing the diverse economic challenges faced by communities. –Feeding America
While nearly 40 percent of the food insecure population in the US is white, food insecurity rates among Black individuals and Latino individuals exceed those of white individuals in most counties. Overall, the percentage for Black and Latino rates were more than double the rates of white people. Native Americans and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders also experience food insecurity at disproportionately high rates. –Feeding America, FRAC