Local Characteristics Are Linked to Food Insecurity Among Households With Elementary School Children

Abstract

This study assessed the relationship between community characteristics and household food security status among elementary school children in Wisconsin. Data were from a self-administered survey of parents of elementary school children during 2003-2005 andwere linked by ZIP code to data on community characteristics. The sample included 8396 households. Food security was measured with the standard 6-item Food Security Scale. A logistic regression model was estimated to measure the relationship between contextual characteristics and household food security status while also controlling for household characteristics. Higher local housing costs, lack of access to public and private transportation, very low proximity to supermarkets and grocery stores, and living in a more urban area all significantly increased the risk of household food insecurity.

Place and food insecurity: a critical review and synthesis of the literature

“…In terms of features of the built environment that could improve access to food, Chung et al (2011) estimated an inverse association between 'walkability' of older adults' neighbourhoods and two measures of food insecurity (concern about not having enough to eat; hungry because could not get out to buy food) and marginally with a third (eating less because of lack of money, P 5 0?056) (41) . In a similar vein, Bartfeld et al (2010) found that household-perceived access to public transit decreased the odds for food insecurity (47) .…”

“…In terms of characteristics of the target populations studied, seven of the eighteen studies examined adults of varying ages (37)(38)(39)(43)(44)(45)(46) , seven explicitly examined families with children (sometimes with data collected using the child as the sampling unit) (40,42,(47)(48)(49)(50)(51) , three focused on seniors (41,52,53) , and one sampled a range of ages (children and adults) (54) . Seven out of the eighteen studies (39 %) focused exclusively on low-income or ethnic subgroups (39,44,46,(48)(49)(50)(51) .…”

“…Four studies used the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) eighteen-item Food Security Scale (40,44,48,51) , although Kirkpatrick and Tarasuk (2010) (48) applied Health Canada's thresholds to define moderate and severe food insecurity. Five studies used the six-item short form of the USDA Food Security Scale (37)(38)(39)42,47) , three studies used items from the Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project in the National Health and Nutrition Examination (NHANES) III surveys (46,50,53) , and one study was based on items administered in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (41) . The three Australian studies (45,52,54) and Dean and Sharkey (2011) (43) adapted and used items from the Radimer/Cornell measure, while Sharkey et al (2011) used an adapted version of the complete Radimer/Cornell measure (49) .…”

“…The most common place characteristic examined was living location, as measured on the urban-rural continuum; eleven studies assessed the potential impact of this arealevel exposure on food insecurity (37)(38)(39)(40)43,45,47,(50)(51)(52)(53) . Most often, this place factor was simply defined as urban v. rural with no clear explanation of the administrative boundaries or criteria used.…”

“…In their study of Wisconsin families with children, Bartfeld et al (2010) estimated a positive association between living 15-22 miles from the nearest supermarket or grocery store v. less than 2 miles (47) . However, distances longer than 2 miles, but shorter than 15 miles, were not related to being food insecure.…”