At the Blog | September 3, 2025

The impossible math of making ends meet

By Rachel Massaro

Food insecurity in Silicon Valley is rarely about food. It’s about the crushing cost of basic survival in one of the most expensive regions in the world — where the price of housing, childcare, and transportation leaves many households with little left for anything else. For a growing share of residents, the real question isn’t what’s for dinner, but what they’ll have to sacrifice to put it on the table.

Recent estimates developed by Drew Starbird, Senior Research Fellow at the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies, in partnership with a local coalition of food assistance providers (and significant research assistance from SCU student Paulina Ordoñez), bring this reality into sharper focus. Drawing on decades of experience as a Santa Clara University statistics professor, Starbird used probability modeling to translate available food insecurity data into ZIP code-level risk estimates throughout Santa Clara county. In other words, he calculated the likelihood that a resident lives in a food-insecure household. His results show that despite the significant efforts of local food assistance providers and government agencies, the risk of food insecurity remains high. These figures do not represent actual, on-the-ground rates, but they reveal where the probability of hardship runs highest — and the patterns are striking.

In East San Jose, for example, the risk of food insecurity is estimated at about 30% in some neighborhoods, compared to just 12% in more affluent communities like Saratoga and parts of Almaden Valley. In Gilroy, the risk approaches 23%, indicating that nearly a quarter of the city’s residents are facing difficult decisions like whether to pay rent, fill a prescription, or buy groceries. Perhaps more surprisingly, in the region’s wealthiest ZIP codes — places with million-dollar homes and top-ranked schools — some families quietly face the same hard choices.

A screenshot from the Risk of Food Insecurity in Santa Clara County map, with details by zip code (view the public link).

This isn’t a new challenge. At the peak of pandemic-era emergency food distribution in late 2020, Silicon Valley food assistance providers were distributing enough meals to feed between 12% and 25% of the entire population, depending on whether those meals represented one meal a day for many residents or three meals a day for fewer. That range equates to nearly one-quarter of all residents receiving enough assistance for a single daily meal — or a smaller number getting full nutritional support each day.

While the crisis response was unprecedented, it was built on a longstanding reality: Minimum wage is not a living wage in Silicon Valley. As of January 1, 2025, California’s statewide minimum wage is $16.50 per hour for all employers, with higher rates for fast food and healthcare workers. More than a dozen Silicon Valley cities have ordinances setting their minimum wages slightly higher, but not high enough to fundamentally change the share of residents who are income adequate. No household type in the region can meet its basic needs on a minimum wage income without assistance — public, private, or both.

The stakes are high, and the context is stark. California’s economy is now the fourth largest in the world, surpassing Japan, according to the governor’s office. Silicon Valley alone — just Santa Clara and San Mateo counties — generated nearly $505 billion in 2024, which would rank as the 31st largest economy globally, between Austria and Norway. Yet within this engine of innovation and wealth creation, too many residents are one unexpected expense away from hunger.

Food insecurity is just one lens on the broader challenge of income inadequacy. Behind each probability estimate are the everyday tradeoffs between paying for food, housing, health care, transportation, or childcare. Understanding those tradeoffs — and where they’re most likely happening — is critical to shaping effective responses.

Estimates like those developed by Starbird and the coalition are part of a broader move to confront this challenge directly. To give our region’s decision-makers the tools they need, fine-grained, local data will be required — data that not only measures how many residents are struggling, but also how they experience and perceive those struggles. Then it will be possible for our metrics to illuminate both the visible symptoms and the root causes, while reflecting the lived experiences of our community members. With that depth of understanding, we can design solutions that truly meet the scale and complexity of the problem.

View regional data related to income adequacy.

About the Author

Rachel Massaro is vice president of Joint Venture and director of research at the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies. Their work aims to bridge the gap between academia, council chambers, the boardroom, and the dinner table.