Abstract
Rates of food insecurity in the US have been rising since 2000 spiking with the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, and have remained essentially unchanged since then despite improvements in the economy. The present study employed a series of indices adapted from the poverty literature to examine the depth and severity of food insecurity across the decade by race and ethnicity among low-income households with and without children. The most rapid increases in the depth and severity of food insecurity were found among low-income households without children. Non-Hispanic White households with and without children had lower prevalence rates but steeper increases in the depth and severity of food insecurity throughout the decade. Non-Hispanic Black households with and without children were at the most disadvantaged among low-income populations.
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Acknowledgments
This project was supported with a grant from the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research through funding by the US Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, contract number AG-3198-B-10-0028. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s) and should not be construed as representing the opinions or policies of the UKCPR or any agency of the Federal Government. Infrastructure support was provided by the Center for Family Research at Bowling Green State University which has core funding from The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development [R24HD050959]. The author wishes to Marta Alvira-Hammond and Alfred DeMaris for assistance with an earlier version of this paper, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
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Balistreri, K.S. A Decade of Change: Measuring the Extent, Depth and Severity of Food Insecurity. J Fam Econ Iss 37, 373–382 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-016-9500-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-016-9500-9