Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper investigates the extent to which unaffordable housing contributes to food insecurity among vulnerable households. The number of low-income households facing severe housing cost burdens exceeding half of income has grown rapidly in recent decades, posing policy challenges at all levels of government. Severe cost burdens are likely to leave low-income households with too little residual income to pay for food, medical care, transportation and other essential needs, thus creating “shelter poverty” (Stone 2006)—that is, poverty induced by shelter costs. Using restricted-use data from the 2015 American Housing Survey, we model the relationship between unaffordable housing and food insecurity, which is measured using the 10-question USDA adult scale. The explanatory variable of interest, housing affordability, is modeled with alternative concepts such shelter poverty, residual income, and residual income after SNAP food assistance transfers (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). We posit that SNAP receipt is a mediating factor in the residual income-to-food insecurity path, and because excess shelter cost is the most frequently used deduction in the SNAP program (Leftin et al. 2017), we explore counterfactual-based mediation analysis techniques that accommodate non-linear interactions and support estimation of direct and indirect effects (Valeri and VanderWeele 2013).