Parental History of Disruptive Life Events and Household Food Insecurity

Objective: To investigate whether a history of disruptive life events (ie, school suspension or expulsion, job termination, hospitalization for mental health, and/or criminal justice involvement) among parents is positively associated with household food insecurity.

Design: Structured interviews and self-report surveys.

Setting: Households across all 50 states in the US.

Participants: Subsample of 6,270 households that participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort with valid maternal and paternal data.

Main outcome measures: Food insecurity was measured when children were aged 9 months (wave 1), 2 years (wave 2), and 4 years (wave 3). Parental history of disruptive life events was measured at wave 1.

Analysis: Logistic regression was used to carry out the analyses.

Results: Each examined disruptive life event was associated with a significant increase in the odds of persistent household food insecurity (P < .05). The probability of persistent household food insecurity was >6 times as large in households with 1 or both parents reporting the occurrence of each of the disruptive life events, relative to households with none of these parental risk factors.

Conclusions and implications: Practitioners may want to consider parental history of various disruptive life events in their assessment of familial risk of household food insecurity. Future policy efforts might include a cost-benefit estimate analysis of intervening earlier in the food insecurity-disruptive life events nexus to advocate for savings to the taxpayer for prevention services. Moreover, future research could evaluate these practice and policy-driven efforts using quasi-experimental designs.