Fewer Americans are going hungry

“SINCE WE TOOK office,” tweeted President Joe Biden on May 23rd, “hunger rates have dropped 43%.” That statistic, although astonishing, is broadly correct, according to data from the Census Bureau. “That’s the American Rescue Plan at work,” Mr Biden added. The claim of causality, however, is less certain.

Since April 2020 the Household Pulse Survey, carried out by the Census Bureau, has asked a representative sample of American adults whether there was enough to eat in their household over the previous week. The share who respond either that there is “sometimes” or “often” not enough food are classified as living in hunger. Over the course of the covid-19 epidemic, this proportion has hovered around 10%. It peaked just ahead of Christmas at 13.7%, equivalent to 30m people. Since then the figure has fallen steeply (see chart). The survey, carried out between April 28th and May 10th, put the figure at 8.7%, or 18.2m people.

Although Mr Biden would like to credit his American Rescue Plan for this improvement, the claim does not stand up to closer inspection. The president signed that bill on March 11th, yet by March 17th the share of people saying that they had not eaten properly had already fallen to its lowest since covid-19 was diagnosed widely in America. It took at least six days for the first Rescue Plan cheques,...