The 2024 Baltimore Area Survey conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers found less food insecurity for Black residents as well as higher satisfaction with schools and local governments.

The 163-question survey asked 1,492 people across the Baltimore area about their relationships with food, transportation, education, home internet access and local government. A little less than two-thirds of respondents were from Baltimore City, with the rest from Baltimore County.

While the previous year’s survey showed more than half of Black Baltimore City and Baltimore County residents were food insecure, 2024’s data revealed a double-digit decline: 37.5% from 2023’s rate of 53.9%. Overall, 28.4% of Baltimore-area residents experienced food insecurity in 2024.

The researchers used a series of questions developed by the United States Department of Agriculture, making it comparable to USDA food insecurity measures across the country. In 2023, the USDA found that 13.5% of households nationwide were food insecure, making even Baltimore’s current improved metrics over double that year’s national average.

“I think that part of what is going on with … food insecurity is that inflation was kind of nearing the end of its long run of rising,” said Michael Bader, an associate professor at Hopkins who presented the research Thursday.

“The prices didn’t go down, but the rate of inflation slowed down considerably. And so I think that what ended up happening was people were kind of able to budget better,” Bader said, adding that 2023’s food insecurity existed across income levels.

The survey also found that the public looked at public schools more favorably.

“Compared to 2023, the share of Black Baltimore City residents who rated the public schools in their neighborhood as high quality doubled,” the report said, from 11.8% to 24.3%. In the county, more than a third of Black residents considered their schools high quality, “up from a quarter” the year before, the report says. White residents in both jurisdictions saw minimal differences in ratings across years.

Bader said the results might have been confounded by when the survey was conducted, however. He explained that some of the optimism for 2024 could have come from the survey being administered in the fall, at the beginning of the school year, whereas 2023’s survey was conducted in the summer. Additional years of data should show a clearer trend, he said.

Baltimore City schools showed improvement in state evaluations over the previous academic year. An increased share of schools earned three stars or above; 26 schools increased their ratings by a star or more. Yet the district has just one five-star school: Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.

Baltimore County Public Schools had the highest number of five-star schools in the state with 20.

Levels of distrust in local government also fell in the Baltimore area, the report showed. The proportion of city residents who said they could “almost never” trust the local government dropped, while the group who said they could trust the government to do the right thing grew.

“In all, about a quarter of Baltimore City residents reported that they could trust their local government to do what was right most or almost all of the time,” the report said.

“I think that really reflects the stability that has been not as common in Baltimore as it has been in the past, so having a continuity of leadership is really helpful,” Bader said.

In addition to the recent lack of scandals that have beset city politics in recent years, Mayor Brandon Scott became the city’s first two-term mayor in two decades, his office said in a statement in December.

The local government’s response to the Key Bridge collapse might have also contributed to the research findings, Bader remarked. The researchers observed similar trends of trust in local government in the county, though more county residents trust the government than their city counterparts.

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