Food Insecurity Research in the United States: Where We Have Been and Where We Need to Go

Craig Gundersen and James Ziliak

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2018, vol. 40, issue 1, 119-135

Abstract: Food insecurity is now recognized as a major health crisis in the United States. This is due to the size of the problem—more than 42 million persons were food insecure in 2015—as well as the multiple negative health outcomes and higher health care costs attributable to food insecurity. An extensive body of literature from multiple fields has examined the causes and consequences of food insecurity and the efficacy of food assistance programs—especially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. We review this literature and provide suggestions for future research directions. We suggest examining the distribution of food insecurity within households, the impact of the food distribution system on food insecurity, the coping mechanisms of low-income food secure families, food insecurity among American Indians, the effects of charitable food assistance, the causal relationship between food insecurity and health outcomes, the declining age gradient in food insecurity among Seniors, the effects of labor force participation and the Great Recession on food insecurity, and the long-term consequences of food insecurity. In addition, the impact of two recent policy recommendations on food insecurity – the minimum wage and the Affordable Care – Act should be considered.

Keywords: Food insecurity; hunger; poverty; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); Food Stamp Program; National School Lunch Program; School Breakfast Program (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (59)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aepp/ppx058 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:apecpp:v:40:y:2018:i:1:p:119-135.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy is currently edited by Timothy Park, Tomislav Vukina and Ian Sheldon

More articles in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().