Brazil saw a decline in food insecurity across all levels in 2024 compared to the previous year, but the problem remains staggering: 54.7 million people still lived in households without reliable access to adequate nutrition.
The data comes from the 2024 edition of the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD Contínua), conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) – the country’s official statistics agency. Released on Friday (10), the study found that 18.9 million households (24.2% of the total) experienced some level of food insecurity, down from 21.1 million (27.6%) in 2023.
What “food insecurity” means in Brazil
Brazil uses the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale (EBIA), which categorizes food insecurity into four levels:
- Mild food insecurity: worry or uncertainty about future food access, or reliance on inadequate diets.
- Moderate food insecurity: reduced food quantity among adults.
- Severe food insecurity: reduced food quantity among both adults and children, with regular episodes of hunger.
In 2024, 16.4% of households reported mild food insecurity (down from 18.2% in 2023), 4.5% moderate (down from 5.3%), and 3.2% severe (down from 4.1%). Severe food insecurity meant that around 2.5 million households consistently faced hunger, including children and adolescents.
Public policy makes a difference
The IBGE survey does not directly assess policy impacts, but analyst Maria Lúcia Vieira noted that the recovery of social programs and improvements in employment and income likely played a role. “Food is the first thing people buy when they can,” she said.
Brazil had dismantled key anti-poverty programs during the Bolsonaro administration (2019–2022), but many were reinstated or expanded under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. These include Bolsa Família, a government social program to provide financial assistance to low-income people.
Hunger is uneven across regions
Despite the overall decline in food scarcity across all major regions between 2023 and 2024, historic regional inequalities in access to food persist. The North and Northeast continue to face the worst conditions.
These regions recorded the lowest percentages of households in food security (62.4% and 65.2%, respectively). Conversely, they had the highest proportions of households in food insecurity. In the North, 6.3% of households experienced severe food insecurity, while in the Northeast the rate reached 4.8%.
The South had the lowest rate of severe food insecurity (1.7%), followed by the Southeast (2.3%). In absolute terms, the concentration of households lacking adequate food access was most notable in Brazil’s most populous regions: 38.0% of food-insecure households were in the Northeast (7.18 million homes), and 35.0% were in the Southeast (6.62 million homes).
Gender, race, and income drive vulnerability
The majority of food-insecure households (59.9%) were headed by women. Although women account for 51.8% of all households, their share among those facing food vulnerability was 19.8 percentage points higher than that of men (40.1%). Moderate food insecurity was where the gender gap was greatest, affecting 61.9% of women-led households compared to 38.1% of men-led ones.
From a racial perspective, 70.4% of food-insecure households (all levels combined) were headed by Black or mixed-race Brazilians (pretos e pardos). Among them, 54.7% were mixed-race (pardos), 28.5% white, and 15.7% Black (pretos).
The disparity was even sharper in cases of severe food insecurity: 56.9% of these households were led by mixed-race Brazilians, more than double the share of white-headed households (24.4%).
There is also a strong association between low education levels of the household head and food insecurity, as well as low income. Households experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity were concentrated among those with per capita incomes of up to one minimum wage (about US$260 in 2024). While these households represent 41% of all households in Brazil, they accounted for 71.9% of cases of moderate or severe hunger.
Children and adolescents
When analyzing by age group, severe food insecurity was highest among the youngest. Among children aged 5 to 17, 3.8% lived in households with severe food insecurity.
For children aged 0 to 4, the rate was 3.3%. Among people 65 or older, the proportion was 2.3%. The presence of children under 5 was consistently linked to lower food security and higher food insecurity across all levels.
By definition of the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale (EBIA), severe food insecurity means that reduced food quantity also affects children. In 2024, all 2.5 million households in this category experienced food shortages that reached children and adolescents.
How the survey works?
The 2024 food security survey was carried out in the last quarter of the year as part of the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD Contínua). It is based on EBIA, an instrument with four levels that measures families’ daily experiences of food security and nutrition.
The responses refer to the 90 days before the interview date. Since IBGE teams went into the field between October and December 2024, the data reflects the situation experienced between July and December, depending on the date of each visit.
To classify each household, a 14-question yes-or-no survey is applied. Questions address issues such as uncertainty about future access to food and actual experiences of hunger. Each affirmative answer receives a point, and the total score places the household into one of the four categories of the scale.
At the most severe levels, questions include whether food intake was reduced or if people went a whole day without eating, situations associated with extreme food insecurity.
Another key point is that the thresholds differ for households with children under 18 compared to those with only adults. That is because when food restrictions affect children, the situation is considered even more critical.
