Food Hardship in America

Posted by Food Research Action Center on September 26, 2016

Food Hardship in America: Households with Children Especially Hard Hit

The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) has been issuing reports for several years that analyze the answers to a survey question asked by Gallup about food hardship, which is the inability of American households to afford adequate food. Most recently, in June 2016, FRAC published an analysis (pdf) of answers to Gallup’s survey in 2015 reporting national, state, and metropolitan statistical area (MSA) rates of food hardship.

In this report, FRAC looks at the data separately for households with children and households without children. For the national analysis, FRAC looks at data year-by-year. For the state and MSA analyses, FRAC combined 2014 and 2015 data, in order to have adequate sample sizes and smaller error rates. The question Gallup asks is, “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?” That question is part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey, which also asked respondents how many children lived in their household. In 2015, 176,313 respondents answered these questions, while 176,212 answered them in 2014. FRAC counts “yes” answers to the former question as evidence of
food hardship.

Given how high child poverty rates are, compared to poverty rates for households without children, it is unsurprising that the food hardship rate is considerably higher in households with children. The difference, however, underscores how broad the harm is to children from poverty and hunger in our society. This report also shows that the size of the disparities varies widely — in some MSAs, the gap is remarkably large, while in others, it is quite small. Indeed, in a small number of MSAs, households without children are more likely to face food hardship.

Read more: http://frac.org/pdf/food-hardship-report-households-with-children-sep-2016.pdf