Poster #95 - Is Food Insecurity an Economic or Subjective Measure of Hardship? Evidence from CPS, SIPP, and PSID

• In Event: Saturday Poster Luncheon

Abstract

Food insecurity is widely used as a measure of material hardship, yet its relationship to other forms of deprivation remains poorly understood. A large cross-sectional literature shows that food-insecure households tend to have lower incomes, fewer assets, and greater exposure to a range of disadvantages. At the same time, a growing causal literature finds that cash transfers often have weak or null effects on food insecurity. These findings are difficult to reconcile if food insecurity is understood simply as a direct consequence of insufficient material resources. One possibility is that food insecurity captures not only objective deprivation, but also households’ broader perceptions and experiences of hardship. Although this interpretation has become increasingly common, direct evidence on the issue remains limited. This study uses longitudinal data from the Current Population Survey, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine whether food insecurity is more closely related to objective economic resources or to subjective experiences of hardship. I construct multiple indicators of household wellbeing, including measures of income, wealth, and direct experiences of hardship, as well as a novel indicator of resources relative to households’ self-reported needs. I then use within-household analyses to assess whether changes in food insecurity track changes in these objective and subjective dimensions of wellbeing over time. I find that food insecurity is highly persistent within households and changes relatively little from one wave to the next. Moreover, within-household changes in food insecurity are only weakly associated with changes in income and wealth. They are more strongly related to shifts in households’ direct experiences of hardship, such as worsening housing conditions or increased difficulty paying bills. By contrast, food insecurity is also largely insensitive to changes in subjective measures of wellbeing, including psychological distress and households’ own assessments of the resources they need to make ends meet. In other words, food insecurity does not appear to move closely with either short-term changes in material resources or short-term changes in subjective wellbeing. These results help reconcile the tension between the cross-sectional literature, which shows that food-insecure households are disadvantaged across many domains, and the causal literature, which finds that unconditional cash transfers often do little to reduce food insecurity.

Author

• Thomas O'Rourke, Princeton University
  Presenting Author