Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In this paper, I explore the relationship between food insecurity and precarious work among single mother households in the United States. In 2013, more than one in three single mother households with children experienced food insecurity (US Department of Agriculture, 2014). Existing studies have documented that current financial resources are an important, but incomplete, determinant of food insecurity. Two separate strands of research have sought to understand why poverty and food insecurity are not synonymous. First, economists have shown that, among low­ income households, those who experience negative income shocks and liquidity constraints are much more likely to experience food insecurity than households with consistent incomes. Second, health researchers assert that, to provide adequate food for their families, mothers also need the time to plan, shop for, and prepare meals. They argue that the time scarcity faced by single mothers struggling to balance work and family demands is an important contributor to food insecurity. Bringing together these two strands of research, I argue that income volatility and time scarcity are both symptoms of a deeper problem: precarious work. Precarious work refers to employment that is “uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker” (Kalleberg, 2009). This type of employment is characterized by too few hours; fluctuating hours; shifts that occur during the evening, night, and/or weekend; and overall job instability. Precarious work can lead to income volatility as workers can lose their jobs or have the number of work hours change from week to week. Precarious work is also related to time constraints as mothers working nontraditional schedules or those that vary from week to week may struggle to find adequate time to plan, shop, and prepare meals for their families. It is important to assess both of these mechanisms as current nutritional assistance policies currently assume that reducing income volatility will be enough to improve food security. To evaluate the relationship between precarious work and food insecurity, I use data on low-income employed single mothers from the 2004 and 2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). I explicitly examine whether mothers in precarious work are more likely to experience food insecurity. I also assess whether these relationships hold after controlling for the effects of income and income volatility. While changing employment, working multiple jobs, unstable part-time employment, and having shifts that occur during nonstandard hours or that vary from week to week were not associated with food insecurity, mothers involved in involuntary part-time work had significantly higher odds of experiencing food insecurity. The positive association between involuntary part-time work and food insecurity remains after controlling for the effects of income and income volatility. These findings highlight the important role that income plays in determining whether or not mothers are able to provide an adequate diet for their families. However, study results also point to the difficulty of measuring precarious work characteristics that may lead to time scarcity, such as schedule unpredictability and the persistence of precarious work over time.