Current Population Survey, December 2009: Food Security Supplement

This data collection is comprised of responses from two sets of survey questionnaires, the basic Current Population Survey (CPS) and a survey on the topic of food security in the United States, which was administered as a supplement to the December 2009 CPS questionnaire. The CPS Food Security supplement was sponsored and conducted by the United States Census Bureau for the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).The CPS, administered monthly, is a labor force survey providing current estimates of the economic status and activities of the population of the United States. Specifically, the CPS provides estimates of total employment (both farm and nonfarm), nonfarm self-employed persons, domestics, and unpaid helpers in nonfarm family enterprises, wage and salaried employees, and estimates of total unemployment. Data from the CPS are provided for the week prior to the survey. In December, the week containing the twelfth day of the month was the interview week. The week containing the fifth day was the reference week (i.e., the week about which the labor force questions were asked).The supplement was intended to research the full range of severity of food insecurity as experienced in United States households. The food security questions were asked of all interviewed households, as appropriate. Respondents were queried on how much the household spent for food, their use of federal and community food assistance programs, whether they were able to afford enough food, food sufficiency, and ways of coping with not having enough food. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, marital status, veteran status, educational attainment, occupation, and income.