Bloomberg — As grocery prices soar, food inflation is hitting people of color much more than other groups.
Almost 40% of Native American, 32% of Black and 30% of Latino people reported having serious problems affording food, according to a study conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with Harvard and NPR. Meanwhile, 21% of White adults said the same.
The study attributes rising food insecurity to inflation, which climbed 8.5% in July from a year earlier, according to US Labor Department data released on Wednesday. Food costs climbed 10.9% from a year ago, the most since 1979.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, around 22% of Black households and 17% of Hispanic households experienced food insecurity in 2020. About 7% of White American households were food insecure, below the national average of 10.5%. The report did not break out Native American households.
Of the 4,200 people surveyed, 58% of Black and Native American families reported not having enough emergency savings to cover at least one month of their expenses, compared to 53% of Latino adults and 36% of White adults.
“These poll findings are a reminder that while everyone is impacted by today’s inflation and economy, we’re not all feeling the same pressures in the same ways,” said Alonzo Plough, the vice president for research and evaluation and chief science officer at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.