Are College Students More Likely to Be Food Insecure than Nonstudents of Similar Ages?

Craig Gundersen

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2021, vol. 43, issue 4, 1476-1486

Abstract: “College hunger” has received a great deal of attention in the media and on some campuses across the US. In this article, I consider the question: Are college students more likely to be food insecure than those of similar ages who are not in college? To answer this question, I use data from the 2014 to 2018 Current Population Survey (CPS), the data used for the official food insecurity rates in the US. Across many specifications, I find zero evidence that college students are at higher risk of food insecurity than nonstudents. This holds whether one looks at those between the ages of eighteen and twenty‐five or between twenty‐six and thirty; whether one looks at “person is a child of the respondent” or “person is not a child of the respondent”; or whether one looks at demographic categories. In fact, food insecurity rates are up to twice as high among nonstudents in comparison to full‐time college students.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13110

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:wly:apecpp:v:43:y:2021:i:4:p:1476-1486

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().