Abstract
Food insecurity continues to affect a significant number of U.S. households, even during periods of economic growth and prosperity. Household food insecurity in the U.S. is measured with the Food Security Core Survey Module, which reflects the importance of household financial resource constraint as the ultimate cause of food insecurity. While the module recognizes some of the strategies households employ to cope with food hardships, it hardly encompasses the salient strategies commonly used by low-income families. The purpose of this study is to identify the major strategies low-income households employ to cope with their food insecurity, and to gain insight into the process they go through toward making ends meet and into how the process may affect their sense of overall happiness. To this end, a survey instrument[1] was developed and administered to low-income households in two public housing communities in Atlanta, Georgia. The results indicated that the majority of the sampled households, even those classified as food secure, report insufficiency of income to cover their monthly expenses. As a consequence, they employed a number of coping strategies to make ends meet. These included forgoing or delaying purchases of non-food items and borrowing or seeking help from friends and relatives. The study also found a mismatch between household self-assessment of their food conditions and food-security level classification. Despite the severity of coping strategies used, some households reported overall happiness with their lives, although, for the majority, the results suggested a positive association between perceptions of food sufficiency and a sense of overall happiness. [1] The survey instrument it is available from the corresponding author upon request.
Highlights
In 1984, the President’s Task Force on Food Assistance noted that despite the long period of economic growth and relatively low unemployment that characterized the American economy over the prior decade, food insufficiency and hunger had continued to affect certain segments of the population at the household and individual levels (Gundersen & Ziliak, 2018; Nord & Andrews, 2002; Olson, 1999; President’s Task Force, 1994)
Summary and Conclusions One of the well-known shortcomings of the standard food security scale pertains to coping strategies
Households who somehow manage to meet their basic food needs using coping strategies not included in the scale could conceivably be classified as food secure
Summary
In 1984, the President’s Task Force on Food Assistance noted that despite the long period of economic growth and relatively low unemployment that characterized the American economy over the prior decade, food insufficiency and hunger had continued to affect certain segments of the population at the household and individual levels (Gundersen & Ziliak, 2018; Nord & Andrews, 2002; Olson, 1999; President’s Task Force, 1994). Understanding the frequency and intensity of coping mechanisms in use helps test the validity of the standard food security scale among very low-income families and informs policy interventions to the extent that household foodinsecurity status is understated by the standard survey instrument (Nord, Coleman-Jensen, Andrews, & Carlson, 2010). The study seeks to explore the implications of the coping strategies and household self-assessment of food conditions for the relevance and validity of the standard food-security classification and for household sense of overall happiness To this end, informed in part by the results reported by Hill and Kauff (2001), we developed a survey instrument which was administered to low-income households in two public housing communities in Atlanta, Georgia. Monthly income (US$): Less than $500 $500–$999 $1,000–$1,999 Not disclosed
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