Background Delay Discounting is the extent to which one prioritizes smaller immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards. The ability to prospect into the future is associated with better health decision-making, which suggests that delay discounting is an important intervention target for the prevention and treatment of chronic disease. Delay discounting decreases throughout development and stressful experiences, particularly those that accompany poverty, may influence this developmental trajectory. The current study leveraged the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn as a natural experiment to understand how changes in food insecurity and psychological stress may associated with changes in delay discounting among parents, adolescents, and children. Methods A stratified cohort of families (N = 76 dyads), established prior to the initial pandemic lockdowns, were asked to complete a follow-up survey in the summer of 2020, during reopening. Thirty-seven (49%) families had an older adolescent (aged 15 – 18 years) in the study and 39 (51%) had an elementary aged child (aged 7 – 12 years) in the follow-up study. Both data collection points included measurements of economic position, psychological stress, food security status, and delay discounting. Results The results showed that pandemic food insecurity was associated with greater stress among parents (β = 2.22, t(65.48) = 2.81, p = 0.007). Parents, Adolescents, and children significantly differed in their response to psychological stress during the pandemic (β = -0.03, t(102.45) = -2.58, p = 0.011), which was driven by a trend for children to show greater delay discounting associated with an increase in psychological stress during the pandemic (β = -0.01, p = 0.071), while adolescents and parents showed no change. Conclusions These findings add to the evidence that food insecurity is uniquely stressful among parents with no effects on delay discounting. Despite this, we found no evidence that food insecurity was stressful for child or adolescents. A trend in our data suggested that childhood, as compared with adolescence, may be an important developmental period for the association between stress and delay discounting. Future research should continue the longitudinal investigation of childhood stress and the developmental trajectory of delay discounting to ascertain how these effects may persist in adulthood.

Background Delay Discounting is the extent to which one prioritizes smaller immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards. The ability to prospect into the future is associated with better health decision making, making delay discounting an important intervention target for the prevention and treatment of chronic disease. Delay discounting decreases throughout development and stressful experiences, particularly those that accompany poverty, may influence this developmental trajectory. The current study leveraged the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn as a natural experiment to understand how changes in food insecurity and psychological stress may impact delay discounting among parents, adolescents, and children. Methods A stratified cohort of families (N = 76 dyads), established prior to the initial pandemic lockdowns, were asked to complete a follow-up survey in the summer of 2020, during reopening. Thirty-seven (49%) families had an older adolescent (aged 15–18 years) in the study and 39 (51%) had an elementary aged child (aged 7–11 years) in the study. Both data collection points included measurements of economic position, food security status, and delay discounting. Results The results showed that pandemic food insecurity was associated with greater stress among parents (β = 2.22, t(65.48) = 2.81, p = 0.007)A decrease in household income during the pandemic was associated with an increase in offspring delay discounting, particularly among adolescents (β = -1.33, t(43.75) = -2.14, p = 0.038). Conversely, children showed an increase in delay discounting associated with an increase in psychological stress during the pandemic, but not any measure of economic position or food insecurity (β = -0.03, t(102.45) = -2.58, p = 0.011). Conclusions These findings support the emerging evidence that food insecurity is uniquely stressful among parents. The diverging nature of the results between adolescents and children suggests that the adolescents are more in tune with the economic position of their home. In both children and adolescents this increase in delay discounting over time occurred during a developmental period where this behavior is usually decreasing. Future research should continue the longitudinal investigation of childhood stress and the developmental trajectory of delay discounting to ascertain how detrimental these effects may be in adulthood.