Seniors

In this report we examine the health consequences of food insecurity among seniors. The report updates our earlier studies on this issue by examining how trends in health and nutrition outcomes among food secure and food insecure seniors have changed over the past decade before and after the Great Recession. Using data from the 1999-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, we find that (1) Food insecure seniors have lower nutrient intakes. For each of the eleven nutrients, average intakes are statistically significantly lower by between 9 and 26 percent for food insecure seniors in comparison to food secure seniors. After controlling for other confounding factors, the effect of food insecurity is still negative for each of the nutrients albeit in some of the cases, the effect is statistically insignificant. These differences in nutrient intakes held across time as well; (2) Food insecure seniors have worse health outcomes. For a wide array of health outcomes, food insecure seniors are worse-off than food secure seniors. Namely, they are 65 percent more likely to be diabetic, twice as likely to report fair or poor general health, 2.3 times more likely to suffer from depression, over 30 percent more likely to report at least one ADL limitation, 19 percent more likely to have high blood pressure, 57 percent more likely to have congestive heart failure, 66 more likely to have experienced a heart attack, twice as likely to report having gum disease, and 91 percent more likely to have asthma. These differences were present in both the aggregate and for each four-year time period we examined. And, with the exception of gum disease, these worse outcomes hold even after controlling for other factors, though attenuated in magnitude; and (3) The effect of food insecurity holds even for a lower-income sample. As shown in Ziliak and Gundersen (2017), food insecurity rates are substantially higher for those with incomes less than two times the poverty line. So, we investigated whether or not the negative association of food insecurity with nutrient intakes and health remain even when we limit our multivariate analyses to those with incomes below twice the poverty line. We find that, in the main, the substantive and statistical significance of the results are quite similar to those for the full sample. This further demonstrates the importance of looking at food insecurity as an independent predictor of negative health and nutrition outcomes, even among lower-income seniors.

In this report we provide an overview of the extent and distribution of food insecurity in 2012 among seniors, along with trends over the past decade using national and state-level data from the December Supplements to the Current Population Survey (CPS). Based on the full set of 18 questions in the Core Food Security Module (CFSM), the module used by the USDA to establish the official food insecurity rates of households in the United States, our emphasis here is on quantifying the senior population facing the threat of hunger (i.e. marginally food insecure). A supplement to this report also presents evidence on seniors at risk of hunger (i.e. food insecure) and on seniors facing hunger (i.e. very low food secure). This report demonstrates that seniors in 2012 continued to face increasing challenges meeting food need. Specifically, we find that

       • 15.3% of seniors face the threat of hunger. This translates into 9.3 million seniors.

       • Those living in states in the South and Southwest, those who are racial or ethnic minorities, those with lower incomes, and those who are younger (ages 60-69) are most likely to be threatened by hunger

.      • Out of those seniors who face the threat of hunger, the majority have incomes above the poverty line and are white.

      • From 2001 to 2012, the fraction of seniors experiencing the threat of hunger increased by 44%. The number of seniors rose by 98% which also reflects the growing population of seniors.

      • Since the onset of the recession in 2007 until 2012, the number of seniors experiencing the threat of hunger has increased by 49%.

The prevalence of multigenerational families is on the rise in the United States, as is food insecurity. We estimate the effect of resident grandchildren on the risk of and transitions in food insecurity using repeated cross sections and longitudinally linked two-year panels of the Current Population Survey from 2001-2010. We find that rates of food insecurity in families with a grandchild present are at least twice as high in a typical year compared to families without a resident grandchild, and the extent of very low food security increased substantially faster among these households over the past decade. The rise in food insecurity during and after the Great Recession is due to both increased entry into food insecurity and decreased exit out of food insecurity. A similar trend accounts for the rise in multigenerational households during the recession—grandchildren were more likely to move in with their grandparents, and once there, were less likely to move out. There are also important differences in risk factors for food insecurity between multigenerational families and those with no grandchildren present. Our transition models show that whether grandchildren remain, or in periods of transition, multigenerational families are at heighted risk of entering food insecurity and remaining in this state. However, the entry of a grandchild may not always be a negative for the family’s food security, nor the exit of the child a positive. Entrance of a child seems to buffer the family from extreme forms of food insecurity while exit exposes the family to risk of deeper food insecurity.