Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Food insecurity affects approximately 1 in 6 Americans and has persisted at high levels since it rose significantly at the beginning of the Great Recession. Food insecurity is an important indicator of material hardship and, as such, should be consistently assessed in surveys that inform researchers and policy makers about low-income and vulnerable families. However, a review of major longitudinal studies shows inconsistent representation of the Core Food Security Module (CFSM), which is considered the gold standard for measuring food security status, and almost no representation of questions about coping strategies households use to address their food insecurity.

Current research identifies charitable feeding, including accessing money or vouchers, bags of groceries, and meals from a charitable program or social service agency, as an important coping strategy used by food insecure households. Client survey data from Feeding America’s Hunger in America 2014 study estimates that more than 46 million individuals accessed charitable feeding services. However, rates of charitable feeding are poorly measured or absent from major longitudinal studies, making it difficult to consistently assess the rate of uptake among households, their demographic characteristics, and the circumstances in which they employ these strategies to cope with material hardship.

This paper documents the inconsistent approach to measuring charitable feeding across three major longitudinal surveys. More specifically, it examines discrepancies in questions about charitable feeding and analyzes data on the prevalence of charitable feeding from the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Fragile Families and Wellbeing Study, and the Health and Retirement Study. This paper compares estimates of the prevalence of charitable feeding derived from questions in the core survey of the 2008 SIPP to similar subpopulations from the Fragile Families and Wellbeing Study, and the Health and Retirement Study, respectively. Additionally, it compares estimates of the prevalence of charitable feeding from each of the longitudinal surveys to data for similar subpopulations from Feeding America’s Hunger in America 2014 study, a survey of 60,000 clients of food pantries and meal programs.

The paper makes the case for improving the measurement of food-related material hardship and household coping strategies in future longitudinal research. It also identifies next steps for research in the field.