Food insecurity and homelessness in the Journeys Home survey

Nicolas Hérault and David Ribar

Journal of Housing Economics, 2017, vol. 37, issue C, 52-66

Abstract: Homelessness not only deprives people of comfort, safety, and dignity but may also cause other problems, including food insecurity. This study uses data from the Journeys Home survey, a large national longitudinal survey of disadvantaged Australians who were homeless or at risk of homelessness, to estimate multivariate behavioural Rasch models of the association between homelessness and food insecurity. The Journeys Home survey includes an extensive set of measures of people's circumstances that we include in our models. We also estimate dummy endogenous variable specifications. All our specifications indicate that homelessness is associated with higher (worse) food insecurity for men. We find unconditional associations in the same direction for women, but these become statistically insignificant when we include extensive sets of observed controls in our models or estimate dummy endogenous variable specifications. Finally, we investigate how homelessness is related to food consumption, meal consumption, and food expenditures. Food expenditures are negatively associated with homelessness for men in all our specifications; however, the other food outcomes for men and women do not show consistent, statistically significant associations.

Keywords: Food insecurity; Food consumption; Food expenditures; Homelessness; Journeys Home survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Food Insecurity and Homelessness in the Journeys Home Survey (2016)
Working Paper: Food Insecurity and Homelessness in the Journeys Home Survey (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhouse:v:37:y:2017:i:c:p:52-66

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhe.2017.05.001

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