Family Structure, Work Patterns and Time Alloca- tions: Potential Mechanisms of Food Insecurity among Children

The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s) and should not be construed as representing the opinions or policies of the UKCPR or any agency of the Federal Government. " 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Project Goals. Over 469 thousand households in the U.S. experienced very low food security among children, a severe condition characterized by reductions in food intake due to an inability to afford enough food. But food insecurity is not simply about economic resources. There exists a paradox in which some poor households with children are food secure while some non-poor households with children are food insecure. This study moves beyond a singular focus on income and considers how the family context may protect or generate risk of food insecurity for children. The goals of the proposed project were to: 1) to provide a detailed profile of an understudied group, households with children experiencing very low food security; 2) to consider the food security paradox—households that are poor but food secure, and households that are food insecure but non-poor, and 3) to examine how family context (structure and parental time allocations) is related to food security among households with children. Data. The study uses multiple rounds of the CPS Food Security Supplement, taking advantage of new cohabitation and parent pointers to explore more refined measures of family structure from the perspective of the child. For the main analysis, data from 2007 through 2010 are pooled, excluding any households surveyed twice due to the 4-8-4 sampling structure of the CPS. The analytic sample (N= 64,860) is composed of children ages 0 to 17 with household-level child food security information and household composition from the child perspective attached. The final research question is addressed by linking multiple years of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to the FSS. The American Time Use Survey (ATUS), a nationally representative sample of U.S. household that collects detailed information on family and household composition as well as time diary information on how individuals allocate their time. Methods. The analytic strategy begins with a descriptive portrait of households (using the pooled FSS) across children's food security status levels 1) high or marginal, 2) low, and 3) very low. Several sets of multinomial logistic regression models are estimated. First, the likelihood of being in a particular food security group was estimated with the full FSS sample in order to assess the independent effects …