In Hawaii, between 2019-2021:
- Food insecurity in Hawaii averaged 9.10%.
- Hawaii’s food insecurity rate was 12.5% lower than the national average of 10.4%.
- The poverty rate in Hawaii in 2021 (using the Supplemental Poverty Measure) was 10.5%, which was 2.7 percentage points higher than the nation overall (7.8%).
- Hawaii’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 Hawaii are homeless or pay over half their income for rent.
- SNAP, alone, lifted 69,000 people above the poverty line in Hawaii, including 30,000 children, per year between 2013 and 2017, on average.
