Hunger in the United States is not an act of nature. It is a policy outcome — and a growing body of evidence suggests that one of the most overlooked contributors is the tax Americans pay on a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk.
According to the latest USDA data, roughly 14 percent of U.S. households are food insecure, meaning they lack consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. One in five children live in such homes. This is not a distant crisis; it is unfolding in cities, suburbs, and rural communities across the country.
The usual suspects are well known: soaring housing costs, stagnant wages, and persistent inflation that eats into family budgets. But a new wave of research zeroes in on a quieter culprit: taxes on groceries.
Most states exempt groceries from sales tax, reflecting a long-standing bipartisan consensus that food is a necessity, not a luxury. Yet nine states still levy some form of grocery tax, and in some localities, combined state and local rates reach nearly 9 percent. These are often the same states with the highest rates of food insecurity.
Recent work by a team of university researchers, including Cornell economist Harry M. Kaiser, found that a 1 percentage point increase in the grocery tax rate is associated with nearly a 1 percent rise in the likelihood that low-income households become food insecure. “The conclusion is difficult to escape,” Kaiser writes: taxing groceries pushes families already on the edge closer to hunger.
The burden is not evenly shared. Grocery taxes are deeply regressive, taking a larger share of income from poor households than from wealthy ones. Worse, the researchers found evidence that retailers often “over-shift” the tax onto consumers. On average, every dollar collected in grocery tax revenue translates into a $1.44 increase in the final price shoppers pay. Discount and dollar stores — where lower-income households are more likely to shop — show the largest over-shifts.
This is an uncomfortable policy outcome. States impose grocery taxes to raise revenue, not to deepen hunger. Yet the evidence increasingly suggests that is exactly what they do. Unlike broader economic forces, this lever is entirely within the control of state governments.
Eliminating grocery taxes would require replacing the lost revenue, but policymakers have better options. More progressive tax systems — including income taxes that ask more from those most able to pay — would ease the strain on struggling families. Even targeted levies on alcohol, tobacco, or heavily processed snack foods would be less punitive than taxing basic groceries. As Kaiser puts it, “A society concerned about hunger should not finance public services by making dinner more expensive for those least able to afford it.”
The trade-offs in public policy are rarely simple, but some are harder to justify than others. Taxing groceries may be administratively easy and politically painless, but its effects are neither neutral nor evenly distributed. It shifts the burden onto those least able to bear it and, in doing so, risks deepening a problem the country already struggles to contain.
Hunger in America is not inevitable. It is the sum of choices — including the quiet, routine choice to tax the most basic necessity of all.
