Military families are being hit with a harsh reality check: while service members are serving the country, a growing number of their households are struggling to afford food.
According to the Military Family Advisory Network’s 2025 Military Family 360 report, 41.2% of respondents said they had low or very low food security, meaning they did not always have enough money or access to buy the food their families needed. The report also found that 84.4% of respondents were dealing with some level of housing burden, meaning rent, mortgage payments, or other housing costs were putting pressure on their budgets. The survey, conducted from October 2, 2025, through January 16, 2026, included responses from 10,089 military-connected people and looked at how financial stress, family stability, and basic needs can affect military readiness.
Per Federal News Network, that food insecurity number is a major jump from 15.6% in 2023, making the new findings hard to ignore. For the first time, rising grocery prices showed up as one of the key reasons military families said they could not afford balanced meals.
“Grocery prices have risen so high that eating healthy, balanced, and varied meals became a luxury, and we were constantly looking for ways to eat cheaper and reduce our grocery budget,” an Air Force military spouse told MFAN.
The issue goes beyond expensive grocery runs. Respondents said some families are leaning on credit cards to buy food, reducing portion sizes, or skipping meals so others in the house can eat. More than a third of currently serving families said they had less than $500 in emergency savings or no emergency fund at all. Among veteran and retiree families, 36.7% reported the same.
“When we look at our food security numbers, we see an upward trend, but we see that in many other areas of the financial security section of the report broadly,” Gabby L’Esperance, MFAN’s vice president of research and evaluation, told Federal News Network. “We see that in financial well-being, we see it in housing burden, we see it in emergency savings, those who have experienced a financial emergency in the past two years, and so the trend is certainly growing. Families are having a more and more difficult time with finances, of which food insecurity is one symptom.”
MFAN has been warning about this for years. On its food and economic security page, the organization says food insecurity means families are unable to afford or access adequate meals consistently. It also notes that frequent moves are a major driver, with more than half of respondents who relocated within 24 months experiencing food insecurity. That matters because military families often face permanent change-of-station moves, new housing costs, childcare gaps, and job disruptions all at once.
“Grocery prices arrived for the first time as one of those main barriers to savings. That’s a new trend in 2025,” L’Esperance said. “We’ve seen housing costs, we’ve seen some other things trickling down before, none of those are as startling as grocery prices for the first time being a key barrier.”
The broader hunger picture is ugly, too. Reuters reported that 18 million U.S. households, or 13.5%, experienced food insecurity in 2023, according to USDA data. But military families face added pressure because service life can make stable two-income households harder to maintain.
Military spouses were one of the biggest red flags in the MFAN report. L’Esperance said spouses are carrying an “invisible load” tied to childcare, employment, household management, community support, and family stability.
“If we were going to pay attention to one population in this report, I would really encourage folks to look at those military spouses,” L’Esperance said.
MFAN also found that spouses were the family members most likely to report suicidal ideation and most likely to turn to emergency rooms for mental health support when they could not get regular care.
“Those statistics are both concerning and startling to see that families are turning more and more towards the emergency room,” L’Esperance said.
Now, the message is clear: this is not just about groceries. MFAN says military spouse well-being and family stability should be treated as readiness, retention, and national security issues.
“Military spouse well-being can no longer be viewed as a quality-of-life issue. It is a readiness issue, a retention issue, and ultimately a national security issue,” the report reads.
