Abstract
The article presents a general description of the Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project (CCHIP), whose goal was to construct a measure of hunger appropriate for the socioeconomic conditions of the United States. The measure is part of a survey instrument developed to document the prevalence of hunger among low income families (with incomes at or below 185% of the federal poverty level) having at least one child under the age of 12. A conceptual model of domestic hunger upon which the survey instrument was based is also described. The hunger index is an additive measure of various aspects of food insufficiency due to constrained resources. The results of a demonstration project survey of 377 low income families, conducted in Seattle, Washington are reported. Both the full and collapsed version of the index are strongly associated in the expected direction with economic and sociodemographic variables, with reliance on strategies to cope with food shortages and with health problems of the children. Judging from these results, the hunger index appears to meet internal and external validity criteria, cohering in expected ways with a theoretical model of domestic hunger.
Published Version
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