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Food insecurity, a condition of limited access to nutritious food, is a critical issue for college students' health and well-being. In this report, we present results from our project that examines the long-term effects of college students' food insecurity on future socioeconomic status, wealth, and food insecurity using nationally representative data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Our study population included 1,574 individuals who were enrolled in college between 1999-2003, aged 16-29 years old during college enrollment, and remained in the sample through 2015-17. We examined the associations of interest using a combination of linear, logistic, multinomial logistic, and fixed-effects regression models, adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics measured concurrent with college enrollment or during childhood. In the sample, the prevalence of food insecurity during college was 14.9%. College food insecurity was associated with lower odds of college completion and lower likelihood of obtaining a Bachelor's degree or a graduate or professional degree. These associations were more pronounced among first-generation college students. College food insecurity was also associated with lower mean labor wage income and lower wealth accumulation (including home equity) across subsequent survey waves between 2005-2019. Finally, college food insecurity was associated with a higher prevalence of food insecurity in the later adult years (measured in 2015-17). Results suggest that college food insecurity has long-term implications for socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood. Future research should focus on the role of programs and policies that can break the cycle of chronic food insecurity and poverty over the life course.

In 2019, 135 million people in 55 countries were in food crises or worse, and 2 billion people did not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food. COVID-19 has exacerbated these hardships and may result in an additional 121 million people facing acute food insecurity by the end of 2020. Further, since the beginning of the pandemic, an estimated 1.6 billion learners in 199 countries worldwide were affected by school closures, with nearly 370 million children not receiving a school meal in 150 countries. The paper presents the evidence on the potential negative short-term and long-term effects of school meal scheme disruption during COVID-19 globally. It shows how vulnerable the children participating in these schemes are, how coping and mitigation measures are often only short-term solutions, and how prioritizing school re-opening is critical. For instance, it highlights how girls are at greater risk of not being in school or of being taken out of school early, which may lead to poor nutrition and health for themselves and their children. However, well-designed school feeding programmes have been shown to enable catch-up from early growth failure and other negative shocks. As such, once schools re-open, school meal schemes can help address the deprivation that children have experienced during the closures and provide an incentive for parents to send and keep their children, especially girls, in school.

Food insecurity, defined as a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food, is a substantial threat to public health in the United States. In 2017, nearly 12% of households reported being food insecure, affecting over 40 million persons. Numerous studies have documented that food insecurity is associated with substantive negative health outcomes among children and families, and leads to excessive health care expenditures. In this paper we compare the levels, trends, and determinants of food insecurity in the University of Michigan's Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to those from the official source of food security statistics in the U.S.--the Food Security Supplement of the Current Population Survey--from 1999-2017. The PSID, which was begun in 1968, is the leading longitudinal household survey on work, welfare, family structure, consumption, health, and wealth. The survey added measures of food security in the 1999-2003 waves, and again in the 2015-2017 waves. This offers the first opportunity to answer key pressing scientific and policy issues such as the persistence of food insecurity within and across generations, and how changes in food security affect and are affected by the level and change in consumption, wealth, and broader measures of health. This paper aims to describe how well levels and trends in food insecurity in the PSID align with the CPS, and the sources of why they might differ. In addition, we examine the robustness of key model predictors of food insecurity--income, race, education, disability status, marital status--across the surveys. We find that, although the estimated food insecurity rates in the PSID are lower than those in the CPS, the trends over time in the two datasets are similar. Food insecurity rates in the PSID and CPS converge from the 1998-2002 period to the 2014-16 period when food insecurity rates closely match those in the CPS. Our findings, taken as a whole, lend credence to the use of the PSID for food insecurity research.

Education is considered one of the great equalizers of economic opportunity. However, pre-existing differences in educational access may generate differences in educational investment, which may perpetuate the economic inequalities that education is supposed to mitigate. In this paper, we examine the role of reduced educational investment as a mechanism for the intergenerational transmission of food insecurity. Specifically, we examine how food insecurity during childhood may reduce educational investments, which, in turn, may increase food insecurity during adulthood. Identifying the mechanism(s) for the intergenerational transmission of food insecurity is essential for designing effective policies to address food insecurity and improve national nutrition and health. Furthermore, understanding the extent to which improvements in food security create positive spillovers in future educational attainment and food security will provide a clearer assessment of the value of programs designed to improve food security. We use longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine education as a potential mechanism (mediator) in the intergenerational transmission of food insecurity. We follow a sample of children almost two decades as they transition from childhood to adulthood. We use an estimator developed by Flores and Flores-Lagunes (2009) to estimate the share of the intergenerational transmission of food insecurity that can be attributed to compromised educational investments. In our preliminary analysis, we find only a small amount of evidence for reduced educational investment as a mechanism for the intergenerational transmission of food insecurity. However, the estimates vary widely across specifications such that large effects are not ruled out.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act waived work requirements nationally in 2010 and broadened waiver eligibility in subsequent years for Able-Bodied Adults without Dependents (ABAWDs) receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. From 2011 to 2017, many states voluntarily imposed work requirements, while other areas became ineligible for waivers because of improved economic conditions. Using data from the American Community Survey from 2010 to 2017, I analyze the influence of work requirements on employment and SNAP participation for ABAWDs. I find that work requirements increased employment for ABAWDs and also significantly decreased SNAP participation.

Exposure to stressful life experiences during childhood, such as food insecurity, can have negative consequences for attainment later in life. The developmental timing of stressful events and how they influence outcomes over the life course is a critical area of research. Indeed, a more comprehensive understanding of the latter life consequences of childhood food insecurity could guide policy-makers in designing more effective social policies to reduce the severity of the poor life outcomes. This project uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the young adult impacts (as late as age 25) of food insecurity experienced in discrete childhood stages -- middle childhood (ages 5-10), early adolescence (ages 11-14), and middle adolescence (ages 15-18). It aims to identify which childhood stage-specific effects of food insecurity are most important to five young adult outcomes in two main areas -- risky sexual behaviors and criminal justice involvement. Results provide consistent evidence that the mean food security scores in middle childhood are associated with the criminal justice involvement outcome. The results are less consistent with the sexual risk taking outcomes. Middle childhood food insecurity is associated with the number of sexual partners in young adulthood, while early adolescent food insecurity is associated with the number of children in young adulthood. Results indicate that male respondents appear to be more sensitive to food insecurity than females.

In this report we present results from our study of the effect of SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] and WIC [Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children] participation during childhood on food insecurity risk in young adulthood. We also examined the effect of parental nutritional knowledge and childhood food involvement on food insecurity in young adulthood. We used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Original Childhood Development Supplement. Our balanced panel (n=1,305) was comprised of individuals who were 0-12 years old in 1997, had data on SNAP and income from their year of birth through 2015, food insecurity data in 2015/2017, and had moved out of their parents' home and started their own household prior to 2015. We estimated logistic models using sample, cluster and strata weights to generate nationally representative results. We find a small, but non-statistically significant effect of SNAP and WIC participation during childhood on odds of being food insecure during young adulthood. When examining change in food security from 1999-2015, we find that participation in SNAP during ages 0-5 years (OR 2.36, 95% CI: 0.99, 5.61), and during ages 12-18 years (OR 2.68, 95% CI: 1.09, 6.57) is associated with a higher odds of being more secure in 2015 than in 1999 compared to low income children who were eligible for, but did not participate in SNAP. Participation in both SNAP and WIC during ages 0-5 predicts higher odds (OR: 4.47, 95% CI: 2.04, 9.78) of being more secure in young adulthood than in childhood compared to low income children who were eligible for, but did not participate in SNAP or WIC. Finally, we saw a statistically significant protective effect of high parental nutritional knowledge (in 1999) and child time spent preparing food (during ages 5-12) on food insecurity risk in 2015-2017. SNAP and WIC, as well as parental nutritional knowledge and childhood food involvement appear to have some protective effect on food insecurity in young adulthood. Future research should further investigate the effects of nutrition education, nutrition assistance program participation, and involvement in food preparation on food insecurity over the short- and long-term.

Young adults face enormous economic, social and psychological challenges when they transition into adulthood. This transition can be especially overwhelming and daunting for young adults with disabilities. Among the challenges young adults with disabilities are faced with are greater risk of low food security and barriers to healthcare. This study examines how the transition to adulthood may affect food security, health, and access to healthcare for youth with disabilities, and estimates the effects that SNAP has on this group in those turbulent years. The study used five years of data (2011-2015) from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). We combined the public and restricted NHIS data with the state SNAP policy variables. The sample included low-income individuals ages 13-25 (and their families) to reflect the life stage from pre-transition, to transition, and then to post-transition. Analyses were conducted at the Census Research Data Center in Columbia, MO. A difference-in-difference (DID) approach in linear models was applied to compare individuals with and without disabilities regarding changes in food security status and their health-related outcomes in the transition to adulthood. State SNAP policy variables were used as exogenous instruments to estimate the effects of SNAP participation on food security and health/healthcare use for youth and young adults with disabilities in the models of instrumental variables. Below is a summary of the main findings in which youth are referred to as individuals under 18, and young adults are referred to as individuals ages 18 to 25. (1) Compared to those without disabilities, individuals with disabilities have a greater risk of low food security in both childhood and young adulthood; (2) Transition into adulthood results in greater food security for individuals without disabilities but an increased risk of low food security for individuals with disabilities. The increased risk for young adults with disabilities may well put them at very low food security, the most severe category on the food security scale; (3) Food security status is associated with health and access to healthcare for all the four groups, youth and young adults, with or without disabilities. However, the associations between low food security and health-related outcomes do not seem to vary by disability status for young adults, indicating the additional risk of low food security that young adults with disabilities experience does not correlate with their health-related outcomes; (4) Contrary to our expectation, SNAP participation does not seem to have statistically significant effects on food security and health-related outcomes for individuals with disabilities. These impacts, although insignificant, show expected directions (i.e., improving food security and health) that are different from those often found in the OLS estimation that does not address the selection bias; and (5) SNAP participation is a statistically significant predictor of youth's food security status measured by the food security raw score only, but not the other three food security measures. SNAP participation appears to have greater impacts for youth than for young adults. In other words, the protective effects of SNAP decrease for young adults perhaps because they encounter greater barriers accessing SNAP than when they were young. The study's limitations are closely examined with a focus on the constraints that we had in the DID analysis and the IV analysis. We also suggested directions for future research. Since food security likely has a profound impact on the long-term development, economic independence, and self-sufficiency, we discussed a few policy strategies that may help individuals with disabilities in their transition to adulthood. These include special outreach services to improve SNAP accessibility, an embedded alert system that serves to bring awareness of a SNAP participant's upcoming transition to adulthood, incorporation of nutrition assistance in transition planning for youth, and better coordination of multiple public programs.

The food stamp program (SNAP) is one of the most important elements of the social safety net and is the second largest anti-poverty program for children in the U.S. (only the EITC raises more children above poverty). The program varies little across states and over time, which creates challenges for quasi-experimental evaluation. Notably, SNAP benefit levels are fixed across 48 states; but local food prices vary widely, leading to substantial variation in the real value of SNAP benefits. In this study, we leverage time variation in the real value of the SNAP benefit across markets to examine the effects of SNAP on child health. We link panel data on regional food prices and the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan [TFP], as measured by the USDA's Quarterly Food at Home Price Database, to restricted-access geo-located National Health Interview Survey data on samples of SNAP-recipient and SNAP-eligible children. We estimate the relationship between the real value of SNAP benefits (i.e., the ratio of the SNAP maximum benefit to the TFP price faced by a household) and children's health and health care utilization, in a fixed effects framework that controls for a number of individual-level and region characteristics, including non-food prices. Our findings indicate that children in market regions with a lower real value of SNAP benefits utilize significantly less health care, and may utilize emergency room care at increased rates. Lower real SNAP benefits also lead to an increase in school absences but we find no effect on reported health status.

Our paper examines the prevalence and determinants of children's transitions into and out of food insecurity since 2001. We use longitudinally linked data from the Food Security Supplements to the Current Population Surveys to estimate one-year transition probabilities of entry and exit from food insecurity. Our results indicate that child hunger is typically short-lived, but children experiencing very low food security frequently experience multiple consecutive years of food insecurity. We demonstrate large demographic and socioeconomic differences in rates of entry into very low food security and persistence in children's food insecurity. Income and employment shocks are important predictors of child hunger transitions. Finally, we find that the Great Recession increased the likelihood that children entered into and persisted in food insecurity among children.

This paper exploits a source of variation in the eligibility for federal nutrition programs to identify the program effects on food insecurity. Children are eligible for the WIC [Women, Infants and Children] program until the day before they turn 61 months old. The result is an age discontinuity in program participation at the 61-month cutoff. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth-cohort dataset, we find strong evidence of a sizeable increase in household food insecurity at the 61-month cutoff. Our findings are robust to different model specifications, datasets, and various bandwidth choices using various non-parametric estimations. A section on data sources is appended.

Rates of food insecurity in households with children have significantly increased over the past decade. The majority of children, including those at risk for food insecurity, participate in some form of non-parental child care during the preschool years. To evaluate the relationship between the two phenomenon, this study investigates the effects of child care arrangements on food insecurity in households with children. To address the selection bias problem that arises from the fact that enrollment in different types of child care is not a random process, this study uses propensity scores techniques. The authors compare outcomes across five child care arrangement patterns: no non-parental care (i.e., exclusive parent care), relative care, non-relative care, center care, and Head Start. Our results demonstrate that for low income preschoolers, compared to no non-parental care, attending a child care center reduces the probability of both food insecurity and very low food security, relative care reduces the probability of food insecurity, and non-relative care increases the probability of very low food security.

Approximately 500 undergraduate students, representing colleges and universities across the United States, who were about to embark on a semester-long credit-bearing sojourn sponsored by Syracuse University (New York) to one of four locations (London, Strasbourg, Madrid, and Florence) were surveyed about their aspirations and attitudes regarding language, food and health, and adjustment/homesickness. Findings indicated: only three percent of respondents stated that learning the host language was the prime reason for studying abroad; just half of the respondents had a positive attitude toward language acquisition; 59 percent had positive expectations about the host country's food, while 27 percent had negative attitudes; 64 percent had positive expectations concerning matters of health; 80 percent felt positively about adjusting to a new lifestyle and a different academic setting; and homesickness was not expected to be a serious concern. Findings prompted a revision of a 1989 chart by Cornelius Grove which was designed to guide programmers planning an immediate post-arrival orientation in choosing the most pertinent topics. The chart shows when certain concerns become most acute, the complexity of the network of expectations, and the adjustment pattern. Implications for planning student exchange programs are discussed. (JDD)

This technical paper describes the latest consumer expenditure survey for the period of 1972 to 1974. The survey is a comprehensive source of detailed information on the expenditure patterns and savings behavior of American consumers in relation to their income and other characteristics. The first part of the paper describes the most recent survey, its sample design, questionnaire content, and general limitations. Section 2 reviews the major uses of data provided by the survey. The discussion focuses on the survey's usefulness for deriving measures of poverty, indicating both strengths and weaknesses. The basic conclusion is that, while the data collected in the survey are ideal in most respects for construction of alternative poverty measures, for both needs and income the sample size is not large enough to support meaningful analysis of breakdowns cross-classified by income, family size, geographic location, and Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas of residence. Section 3 discusses the preliminary results of the survey in terms of changes in basic spending patterns for food that have occurred since the last survey. (Author/AM)

The paper explores how continuously expanding world demand for food, feed, and fuel is generating pressure to restructure agricultural land use. In addition, problems related to transfer of agricultural crop land to energy crops are discussed. The technology of energy crops has developed to the point where large-scale commercial production of alcohol from high-yielding energy crops appears to be favorable. As gasoline prices reach $2.00 per gallon, gasahol becomes not only feasible but profitable, particularly when factors such as subsidies and by-product credit are considered. National plans to produce energy crops have been formulated in the United States, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. Brazil has already implemented a large scale alcohol fuel program based principally on sugar cane. On the negative side, however, Brazil has already felt the impact of rapidly increasing food prices. The millions who are at the bottom of the economic ladder in Brazil and elsewhere, will be increasingly squeezed as the more affluent increase their claims to cropland. The conclusion is that decision makers in developing and developed nations should carefully assess the impact of energy crop iniatives on food prices and availability before encouraging widespread conversion of cropland into energy crops. (DB)

Major arguments and background of the worldwide land reform debate are reviewed. In developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the control of farmland remains a principal key to wealth, status, and power. Rural landless peasants at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, estimated by the World Bank at more than 600 million people, are unable to meet basic needs such as food, fuel, shelter, education, health care, and family planning. Review of international agricultural output data indicates that the economic case for land reform often rivals the social case for redistributive policies. Not only do grossly skewed land ownership and oppressive tenancy conditions have social consequences, they also result in a system which uses land and capital less efficiently than small family farms. In addition to increased crop output, the economic case for land reform also rests on self-propelled economic development, full employment, and political and economic stability. However, although United Nations officials and diplomats from developing countries realize the contribution that land reform can make to agricultural progress, land reform is generally avoided by political maneuvering. The conclusion is that if developing nations combine land redistribution with population stabilization and intelligent use of foreign capital, they will generate more equitable and efficient land use. (Author/DB)

Analysts of U.S.-Soviet balance of power usually focus on relative military strength. But other factors determine a country's overall power and influence. Among the most basic is a country's capacity to feed its people. By this measure the Soviet Union appears to be in deep trouble. Massive spending has increased Soviet military strength in recent years, but the country has become weaker agriculturally. While the two superpowers now appear roughly equal in military strength, the advantage in agriculture has shifted dramatically toward the United States. The U.S. exportable food surplus is climbing, while Soviet dependence on food imports is growing. The dramatic shift in the agricultural balance of power between the two countries has been decades in the making, but contrasting food surpluses/deficits have been highly visible only in the last decade or so. As deterioration of Soviet agriculture continues, the need to import food will become even greater. The relationship between grain flow from the United States to the Soviet Union constitutes a new economic tie between the two countries, one that could eventually transform their political relations as well. (JN)

Human activities that have altered the earth's chemistry are discussed in terms of their potential ecological and economic consequences. Humanity's impact on the disruption of the natural cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur is assessed. Data are presented which illustrate the extent of change in these cycles. Risks particularly threatening and costly to society are identified as those associated with food, security, forests, and human health. Each of these risk areas are explained and specific problems and conditions are highlighted. Strategies of minimizing risks through measures that remedy several problems simultaneously are advocated. Recommended actions include: (1) reduction of fossil fuel use; (2) support of new energy technologies; (3) establishment of standards for residential appliances; (4) increase of recycling efforts; (5) preservation of forests and planting of trees; (6) elimination of lead in gasoline; (7) more extensive toxicity testing; (8) use of an integrative pest management program; and (9) detoxification of wastes. Because of the global nature of these risks, international co-operation and active collaboration efforts to explore policy options are urged. (ML)