Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Through a cooperative research agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Economic Research Service (ERS), we use data from the USDA’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) to examine food security, food assistance, and food shopping behaviors among U.S. households particularly vulnerable to experiencing food-related hardship, including households with elderly family members, with disabled children or adults, and households in high-poverty remote rural communities. FoodAPS is a nationally representative survey of 4,826 American households – including an oversample of low-income households -- which gathers detailed information about food purchases, demographic and employment characteristics, food assistance receipt, and the contours of local food resource infrastructures between April 2012 to January 2013. These data are unique in that they allow researchers to consider how a host of household, contextual, and policy-level factors are associated with several different food outcomes or behaviors. In particular, the FoodAPS oversample of low-income households allows researchers to explore the experiences of particularly vulnerable population sub-groups – such as low-income households with disabled adults or located in remote rural areas – in a manner not possible in other data sources.

Preliminary descriptive findings examine food security, food assistance receipt, and food shopping outcomes. Several key findings stand out. First, food insecurity is higher among households with a disabled adult or child, than among households without a disabled resident (35.2 percent versus 12.4 percent, respectively). We also find that food insecure disabled households report relatively high levels of hardship (e.g., poor financial conditions), dependence upon others for transportation for food shopping purposes, and usage of food pantry assistance than food insecure households without a disabled individual. Other findings highlight the gaps in food access between metropolitan and rural households. For instance, poor rural households must travel two to three times as far to reach a supermarket, as poor households in urban or suburban settings. Subsequent descriptive work will examine intersectionalities between age, disability status, geographic location, income, and household composition. In addition to considering the prevalence of food security, food assistance and food shopping patterns, the paper models the relationship between household, contextual, and policy-level charactersitics associated with those outcomes or behaviors.

Our findings will provide insight into the hardship and needs of vulnerable population sub-groups not often at the center of empirical research efforts, but central to the provision of public and charitable food assistance. Moreover, our findings will point to future food policy research questions and will help inform planning around future data collection efforts by the USDA.