Food Insecurity Among Homeless and Precariously Housed Children and Families

摘要 当前人口调查(CPS)数据记录了美国儿童中持续存在的粮食不安全问题，尽管 一系列旨在改善食品获取和营养的政府计划。儿童食品的意义 不安全感(或称CFI)存在于其发展、健康、教育和晚年的负面后果中。然而，该组织的成员 可以说，最容易受到这种后果影响的美国人--无家可归的儿童及其家人--并非如此 由CPS研究设计捕获。因此，人们对无家可归和粮食不安全的了解很大程度上来自于 在当地范围内、基于住所或临床样本的研究，或限于某些类型的无家可归青年(例如， 青少年离家出走)。不同研究在方法论和实质重点上的差异，加上一个理论上的 弯曲，进一步碎片化这项研究，并限制其融入更大的粮食不安全学术机构。补救 针对这些问题，我们提出了全面分析无家可归和不稳定儿童的粮食不安全问题 寄宿家庭。指导我们研究的是一个家庭资源配置的理论模型，在这个模型中，风险和保护 部分通过父母的管理能力发挥作用的因素，影响了他们的后代获得食物的机会。年长(1996) 但来自全国无家可归者援助提供者和客户调查(NSHAPC)的未利用数据被用来 对模型进行评估。NSHAPC客户访谈包含从CPS食品中提取的精选儿童和成人指标 安全模块，使我们能够(1)估计无家可归家庭的CFI程度，包括与全美国的比较 有子女的家庭，贫困线以下家庭的子集，以及住房条件不稳定的家庭 NSHAPC样本；(2)确定哪些理论上相关的变量预测无家可归和不稳定的可能性 有粮食无保障子女的住房家庭，注意父母资本的相对重要性，父母 脆弱性、家庭组成和父母的工具性行为(为实现住房稳定，获得 政府援助，并促进其子女融入机构)；(3)说明食品购置情况 抽样家庭的战略，详细说明所使用的食物来源的数量和类型以及 不同的策略与目标2中提到的因素有关；以及(4)探索母体食物之间的关系 无家可归和住房危险的家庭中的不安全感和CFI，这可能是和谐的(当父母和孩子 粮食安全状况一致)或不协调(当它们不一致时)。我们通过研究经验来解决这四个目标 在NSHAPC样本中的738名父母受访者中(487人目前无家可归，251人住房危险)和1,614人 18岁以下的儿童在他们的照料下。对于最初的目标，1996年CPS粮食安全微观数据将使必要的 比较。然而，大多数描述性和多变量分析将检查NSHAPC之间的差异 家庭(无家可归与住房不稳定，食物不安全与安全)。

Summary Current Population Survey (CPS) data document the persistence of food insecurity among America's children despite an array of government programs geared toward improving food access and nutrition. The significance of child food insecurity (or CFI) lies in its negative developmental, health, educational, and later-life consequences. Yet the members of the US population arguably most vulnerable to such consequences—homeless children and their families—are not captured by the CPS study design. Hence, much of what is known about homelessness and food insecurity comes from research that is local in scope, based on shelter or clinical samples, or restricted to certain kinds of homeless youth (e.g., adolescent runaways). Differences across studies in methodology and substantive emphasis, coupled with an atheoretical bent, further fragment this research and limit its integration into the larger body of food insecurity scholarship. To remedy these problems, we propose a comprehensive analysis of food insecurity among children in homeless and precariously housed families. Guiding our research is a theoretical model of family resource allocation in which risk and protective factors, operating partially through parents' managerial capacity, influence their offspring's access to food. Older (1996) but unexploited data from the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients (NSHAPC) are used to evaluate the model. The NSHAPC client interview contains selected child and adult measures drawn from the CPS food security module that allow us to (1) estimate the extent of CFI among homeless families, including comparisons to all US households with children, the subset of those households below the poverty line, and precariously housed families in the NSHAPC sample; (2) identify which theoretically relevant variables predict the likelihood of homeless and precariously housed families having food-insecure children, with attention to the relative importance of parental capital, parental vulnerabilities, family composition, and instrumental behaviors by parents (to achieve housing stability, obtain government assistance, and facilitate their children's institutional integration); (3) account for the food acquisition strategies of the sample families, detailing the number and types of food sources employed and the degree to which different strategies are associated with the factors noted in aim 2; and (4) probe the relationship between parent food insecurity and CFI within homeless and precariously housed families, which may be concordant (when parent and child food security statuses align) or discordant (when they do not). We address these four aims by examining the experiences of the 738 parent respondents (487 currently homeless, 251 precariously housed) in the NSHAPC sample and the 1,614 children under age 18 in their care. For the initial aim, 1996 CPS food security microdata will enable the necessary comparisons. Most of the descriptive and multivariate analyses, however, will examine variation among the NSHAPC families (homeless vs. precariously housed, food-insecure vs. secure).