Research
2012
This paper exploits a source of variation in the eligibility for federal nutrition programs to identify the program effects on food insecurity. Children are eligible for the WIC program until the day before they turn 61 months old. The result is an age discontinuity in program participation at the 61-month cutoff. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth-cohort dataset, we find strong evidence of a sizeable increase in household food insecurity at the 61-month cutoff.
This paper examines the association between poverty and food insecurity among children using the official measure of poverty and the newsupplemental poverty measure of the Census Bureau based on a more inclusive definition of family resources and needs. Our objective is to study whether the association between food insecurity and poverty improves with a more comprehensive measure of income and needs.
Does the safety net reduce food insecurity in families? In this paper we investigate how the structure of benefits for five major safety net programs – TANF, SSI, EITC, SNAP, and Medicaid – affects low food security in families and very low food security among children. We build a calculator for the years 2001-2009 to impute eligibility and benefits for these programs in each state, taking into account cross-program eligibility rules.
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.
Very low food security among young children is associated with developmental deficiencies. However, little is known about the factors that predict entry into or exit from very low food security during early childhood. This study seeks to, 1) Understand the triggers that explain movements into or out of very low food security among children from birth to age five; and, 2) Examine the first aim using different definitions of food insecurity.
This study seeks to determine the role that parental incarceration plays on the probability of food insecurity among families with children and very low food security of children using micro-level data from the Fragile Families and Child Well Being Study (FFCWS). The data set contains the 18-question food security module which allows us to explore the link between incarceration and food insecurity and very low food security among children, families, and adults.
The Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC) is considered a crucial component of the social safety net in the United States, yet there is limited supporting evidence on the effects of WIC on the nutritional well-being and food security of infants and young children. Two key identification problems have been especially difficult to address. First, the decision to take up WIC is endogenous as households are not randomly assigned to the program; recipients are likely to differ from nonrecipients in unobserved ways (e.g., prior health) that are related to associated outcomes.
Children at the most risk of very low food security are more often being raised in immigrant families. While under a quarter of all children have immigrant parents, a disproportionate amount (40%) comprise the population of children living under the most severe conditions of food insecurity. Family structure is a key predictive factor among low-income families. Cildren living with a single parent or living in a more complex family are at an increased risk of low or very low food security, compared with children living in either a 100% biological family or a stepfamily.
The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) provides cash reimbursement to family day care, child care centers, homeless shelters, and after-school programs for meals and snacks served to children. While adults and school-aged children are eligible, the large majority of funding through this program is directed towards younger children. In 2009, 3.2 million children participated (versus 112,000 adults). In this research, we estimate the direct effect of provider participation in CACFP on household and child food insecurity of all income levels.
To measure poverty, incomes must be made equivalent across households with different structures. In this paper, we use a very flexible ordered response model to analyze the relationship between income, demographic structure, and subjective assessments of financial wellbeing drawn from the 1991-2008 British Household Panel Survey. Our results suggest the existence of large-scale economies within marital/cohabiting couples, but substantial diseconomies from the addition of children or further adults.