ABSTRACT
In 2012, 33 million US adults and 15 million children were food insecure. Within households, food insecurity is associated with negative outcomes for both children and adults, but is unequally distributed, with adults more frequently food insecure. Depriving themselves of food to feed their dependents, they put themselves at greater risk for conditions linked with food insecurity. One indirect means of increasing adults’ food security may be providing consistent access to nutritious food to children, allowing for a reallocation of household resources to help adults within these households achieve food security. The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) school nutritional assistance programs have beneficial educational, dietary, and behavioral outcomes for children, but the unintended consequences of such programs for adults in the household are unexamined. In this study, I consider whether children's participation in school meal programs may be associated with adult food security. Using the combined 2007–2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data, I find adults in child participant households are less food secure than those in child nonparticipant households. Additionally, children's greater school meal participation, determined by subsidy and program enrollment level, is associated with worse adult food security outcomes. Results suggest that any unintended benefits of school meal programs for adults’ food security may not be detectable for adults in households under 185% of the federal poverty line threshold. The provision of school meal programs to children appears insufficient to alleviate adult food insecurity within the household. Evidence of sample self-selection supports this conclusion.
