Food insecurity and time use in elderly vs. non‐elderly: An exploratory analysis

Abstract

In the US, elderly households are more food secure than younger households. A possible explanation is that increased time availability enables elderly households to adopt strategies to improve their food security. Using time use data, we find elderly households spend more time in meal preparation and eating time than younger households. Creating a matched dataset of household time use and food security, we find that meal preparation and eating time have a small contribution to differences in food insecurity between older and younger households. However, these relationships are heterogeneous depending upon marital status and age cohort of the household head.

Introduction to senior hunger special issue

“…Berning et al (2023) take these ideas to examine whether this substitution of time in food preparation results in improved food security among older households relative to younger households. To do so they use the CPS Food Security Supplement linked to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from 2003 to 2018.…”

“…Much of the literature found that seniors cut back on spending on food upon retirement, and thus claimed that consumption fell, whereas Hurst and Aguiar showed that seniors invested more time in the production of food so that the combined value of money and time left total food consumption unchanged at retirement. Berning et al (2023) take these ideas to examine whether this substitution of time in food preparation results in improved food security among older households relative to younger households. To do so they use the CPS Food Security Supplement linked to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from 2003 to 2018.…”

Disparities in food insecurity among Black and White households: An analysis by age cohort, poverty, education, and home ownership

“…High Ed are households with one household head that has a bachelor's degree or higher. households to report greater food security (Berning et al, 2022), the transition to lower levels of FI is much more marked for White than Black households.…”

“…We include the vector of age cohort indicators (AC) to control for differences in FI between households at different points in their lives. Recent work by Berning et al (2022) shows that FI incidence for all households follows a nonlinear path across ages, reaching its lowest levels after 80. We also include year and state indicator variables to control for space‐ and time‐invariant factors that can be related to FI probability.…”

“…While there is a negative and statistically significant relationship between ages 70 and older and FI probability for White households, the only negative and statistically significant association between age groups and FI for Black households is found for the 80 and above age cohort. That is, the widely documented decline in FI across age cohorts (see e.g., Berning et al, 2022;Ziliak & Gundersen, 2016) is more marked for White than Black households, which may be reflective of the history of racism that older Black households have endured.…”