Household Food Insecurity and Early Childhood Health and Cognitive Development Among Children of Immigrants

Abstract

Food insecurity is negatively related to child development and health. In this study, we use Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort data to assess the cognitive and health consequences of household food insecurity for children of immigrants compared with children of native-born parents. Results suggest that children of immigrants from food insecure households fare worse than their native peers from food insecure households in health but not in cognitive skills after child and maternal demographic characteristics are taken into account. The remaining health disparity between children in food insecure immigrant households and children in food insecure nonimmigrant households is explained away by immigrant risk and protective factors. Having parents with strong mental health and living in two-parent families partially offset the negative health consequences associated with food insecurity. However, compared with food insecure nonimmigrant children, low socioeconomic risk may exacerbate the negative health consequences of food insecurity among children of immigrants.

Food Insecurity Among Hispanic/Latino Youth: Who Is at Risk and What Are the Health Correlates?

“…Such regulations will likely increase food insecurity among Hispanic/Latino youth, with potential health implications. To identify factors that may lower the food insecurity risk and related health burdens of Hispanic/Latino youth, this study examines the correlates of food insecurity and health among youth in middle childhood and adolescence (ages [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16].…”

“…Because of Hispanic/Latino youth's racial/ethnic minority status and immigration connections-over 60% are children of immigrants [8]-they experience unique challenges and have unique resources that may ameliorate or exacerbate food insecurity risk. For instance, Hispanic/ Latino youth experience multiple acculturative (e.g., adjusting to new norms, family dynamics, and discrimination) and economic (e.g., low-income status, parental unemployment, and neighborhood isolation) stressors that can increase food insecurity risk [9][10][11][12]. Additionally, many immigrant Hispanic/Latino families are excluded from safety-net supports designed to combat food insecurity, either through direct exclusion (i.e.…”

“…Consequently, many Hispanic/Latino youth and families have few resources to protect against food insecurity. However, research often finds a health advantage among children of immigrants partly due to their optimism/resilience, healthier diets, and strong family/social supports-protective factors that can potentially decrease food insecurity risk [9][10][11][12][16][17][18]. Taking advantage of a unique, large-scale dataset on Hispanic/Latino youth, our first objective is to examine how acculturation factors, socioeconomic stressors, and family/social supports relate to household food insecurity risk and severity.…”

“…Evidence on the health implications of food insecurity among Hispanic/Latino youth is also limited. Most research on youth food insecurity and health is based on the experiences of all school-age children (ages [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and does not disaggregate effects by nativity or race/ ethnicity. 8,9 This research indicates that food insecurity is positively associated with both externalizing (e.g., aggression) and internalizing (e.g., depression) problem behaviors [19,20] and, though evidence is mixed, positively related to Body Mass Index (BMI) and obesity [16,[21][22][23][24][25][26].…”

“…Characterized as the obesity-food insecurity paradox, this positive association with BMI/obesity may be due to reduced diet quality among food insecure children [9,17,27,28]. Research also indicates that the health implications of food insecurity are greater when food insecurity is severe and often differ by sex, age, socioeconomic status and parent nativity [4,10,19,21,26]. Research has yet to examine the health implications of food insecurity among Hispanic/Latino youth specifically.…”