In California, between 2019-2021:
- Food insecurity in California averaged 9.6%.
- California’s food insecurity rate was 8% lower than the national average of 10.4%.2The poverty rate in California in 2021 (using the Supplemental Poverty Measure) was 13.2%, which was 5.4 percentage points higher than the nation overall (7.8%).
- California’s poverty rate is high compared to the rest of the nation in large part because of the high cost of housing. Four in 10 low-income people in California are homeless or pay over half their income for rent.
- SNAP, alone, lifted 833,000 people above the poverty line in California, including 408,000 children, per year between 2013 and 2017, on average.
