Combating Food Insecurity in the U.S. Navy

Abstract

To combat food insecurity, the Department of the Navy will increase the Basic Needs Allowance (BNA) total household income requirement up to 150% of the Federal Poverty Guideline (FPG) in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023. This thesis uses machine learning techniques on comparable civilian data to create a model that best predicts the risk of food insecurity and the characteristics of Sailors who are food insecure. To measure the effectiveness of the BNA, this study simulates the increase in total household income up to 130% and 150% FPG, with and without the Basic Allowance for Housing included in the total household income calculation and reruns the prediction model to see the changes in predicted risk of food insecurity. The model suggests that 17.6% of Sailors are food insecure. Additionally, the BNA in each simulation insignificantly decreases the food insecurity rate. Less than 1% of Sailors qualify for the BNA, while 17% are predicted to be food insecure. Therefore, the BNA provides an insufficien