Research

The aim of this paper is to assess the adequacy of the data infrastructure in the United States to meet future research and policy evaluation needs as it pertains to income, program participation, poverty, and financial vulnerability. I first discuss some major research themes that are likely to dominate policy and scientific discussions in the coming decade. This list includes research on the long-term consequences of income inequality and mobility, issues of transfer-program participation and intergenerational dependence, challenges with poverty measurement and poverty persistence, and material deprivation. I then summarize what information we currently collect in the U.S. that is used to address these issues, with particular focus on ten national panel datasets that cover these domains and continue to be fielded by the various federal agencies. Included in this section is a discussion of challenges posed by rising income nonresponse and underreporting in many panel surveys. I then conclude with a discussion of how the current panel surveys can be improved to address growing need for social science research on inequality, poverty, and material well being.

Concern about spatial access to food retailers and food assistance resources has increased in recent years, placing greater importance on understanding how connections to the local food resource infrastructure shapes food security. This is especially true during the Great Recession era, during which time a greater incidence of economic shocks has contributed to rising food insecurity and rising food assistance caseloads. Using data from the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study (MRRS), a panel survey representative of working-age adults in the Detroit Metropolitan Area, this project explores two primary research questions related to food security of low-income households. First, how does access to the local food resource infrastructure relate to the risk of food insecurity? Second, to what extent is the experience of unemployment associated with increased risk of food insecurity? Across most measures, we find that many vulnerable population groups have greater or at least comparable spatial access to food resources as less vulnerable populations groups. We also find that in some instances closer proximity to SNAP-certified supermarkets or grocery stores is negatively associated with food security, meaning households that are closer to supermarkets and small grocery stores are more likely to report food insecurity, than those that are further away. Lower levels of education, experience of unemployment, and the experience of financial hardship over the last year also are broadly associated with greater risk of food insecurity.

Theory suggests that adverse life events—such as unemployment or health shocks—can result in food insecurity, which has increased substantially in the U.S. over the past decade alongside the obesity epidemic. We test this proposition by estimating the effects of a specific and salient mental health event—maternal depression during the postpartum year—on child and family food insecurity. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort, we estimate the effects of maternal depression on food insecurity using both single- and two-stage models, and explore potential buffering effects of relevant public assistance programs and supports. We find that moderate to severe maternal depression increases the likelihood that children and households experience any food insecurity—by between 50 and 80%, depending on the measure of food insecurity. We also find that maternal depression increases the likelihood of reliance on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children; Medicaid; and the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, suggesting that these programs play a buffering role.

This project examines why very low food security status among children is different across households with very similar measured resources. Controlling for measures of income-to-needs, we examine whether elements in  the environment, household characteristics,  or  behaviors  are  systematically  correlated  with  VLFS  among children. We use different measures of income-to-needs, including those averaged across years to capture “permanent” income (or to average out measurement error) and measures that include income after taxes and transfers. Our analysis uses the Current Population Survey  (across many years, matched December to March),  the American Time Use Survey (matched to the December CPS), the National Health and Nutrition  Examination  Surveys  (1999;2010),  and  the  Panel  Study  of  Income Dynamics.  We  find  that,  no  matter  how  we  control for  income-to-needs,  certain characteristics appear to be systematically correlated with VLFS among children. In particular,  mental  and  physical  disabilities  of  the  household  head  are  strongly correlated  with  VLFS  among  children.  The presence of  teenage  children,  holding other  aspects  of  household  size  and  composition  constant,  predict  VLFS  among children, suggesting that larger children require more food. Finally, participating in transfer  programs  is  correlated  with  VLFS  among  children,  suggesting  that  these households  are  in  the  “system.”  These patterns suggest pathways for future research and future policy actions to address VLFS among children.

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 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) serves as the data source for official income, poverty, and inequality statistics in the United States. There is a concern that the rise in nonresponse to earnings questions could deteriorate data quality and distort estimates of these important metrics. We use a dataset of internal ASEC records matched to Social Security Detailed Earnings Records (DER) to study the impact of earnings nonresponse on estimates of poverty from 1997-2008. Our analysis does not treat the administrative data as the “truth”; instead, we rely on information from both administrative and survey data. We compare a “full response” poverty rate that assumes all ASEC respondents provided earnings data to the official poverty rate to gauge the nonresponse bias. On average, we find the nonresponse bias is about 1.0 percentage point.

We examine characteristics and correlates of households in the United States that are most likely to have children at risk of inadequate nutrition – those that report very low food security (VLFS) among their children. Using 11 years of the Current Population Survey, plus data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and American Time Use Survey, we describe these households in great detail with the goal of trying to understand how these households differ from households without such severe food insecurity. While household income certainly plays an important role in determining VLFS among children, we find that even after flexibly controlling for income-to-poverty rates some household characteristics and patterns of program participation have important additional explanatory power. Finally, our examination of the NHANES and ATUS data suggests an important role for both mental and physical health in determining the food security status of children.

Receipt of benefits from other traditional transfer programs by SNAP families is common, with 76 percent of those families receiving at least one other major benefit of that type, excluding Medicaid, in 2008. However, over half of these only received one other benefit and only a very small fraction received more than two others. Over the long-term, multiple benefit receipt among SNAP families has been falling, a result of declines in the TANF caseload offsetting rises in the SSI, SSDI, and WIC caseloads. Finally, the analysis shows that high marginal tax rates generated by multiple program receipt are relevant for only a small portion of the TANF caseload, namely, the portion of the caseload that is nondisabled, nonelderly, and have earnings in the phaseout regions of the programs where marginal tax rates are high. The vast majority of SNAP families are not affected and, indeed, most have sufficiently low earnings that they face negative cumulative marginal tax rates.

Food insecure seniors have lower nutrient intakes. For each of the eleven nutrients, average intakes are statistically significantly lower generally by 10-20 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 health outcomes held across time. 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 50 percent more likely to be diabetic, twice as likely to report fair or poor general health, three times more likely to suffer from depression, 30 percent more likely to report at least one ADL limitation, 14 percent more likely to have high blood pressure, nearly 60 percent more likely to have congestive heart failure or experienced a heart attack, and twice as likely to report having gum disease or 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. The effect of food insecurity holds even for a lower-income sample. As shown in Ziliak and Gundersen (2013), food insecurity rates are substantially higher for those with incomes less than 200% of 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 200% of 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.

This study examined whether food insecurity was different for children in cohabiting or repartnered families compared to those in single mother or married (biological) parent families. We compared probabilities of child food insecurity across different family structures in four national datasets the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort ECLS-B); the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study (FFWCS); the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K); and, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement (PSID-CDS). The likelihood of child food insecurity in cohabiting or repartnered families were generally higher than in married biological parent families and often statistically indistinguishable from single mother families.  Children whose biological parents are cohabiting or whose biological mothers have repartnered have comparable risk for food insecurity to those in single mother households. However, family structure is not related to child food insecurity above and beyond the influence of other factors such as household income, family size, and maternal race, ethnicity, education, and age.