Food insecurity and health outcomes among multigenerational households (805.11)

Abstract

An extensive literature examines the impact of food insecurity on health outcomes but there has been no work looking at the impact of food insecurity on grandparents raising grandchildren. This lack of research is unfortunate insofar as multigenerational households have substantially higher rates of food insecurity than households without multigenerations. Moreover, these food insecurity rates increased sharply during the Great Recession and have remained high. In this paper we fill this lacuna with analyses of the 1999‐2008 waves of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). We compare the characteristics and health outcomes for adults in households with grandchildren to adults in households without grandchildren present by food security status. After these bivariate comparisons, we pull everything together within several multivariate models. After controlling for food insecurity status, having grandchildren present, the interaction between food insecurity status and grandchildren present, and other covariates, we find that food insecurity status is the primary determinant of whether or not someone suffers from negative health outcomes.