Hunger in young children of Mexican immigrant families

Abstract

Objective: To measure rates of hunger and food insecurity among young US-born Latino children with Mexican immigrant parents (Latinos) compared with a nonimmigrant non-Latino population (non-Latinos) in a low-income clinic population. Design, setting and subjects: A repeated cross-sectional survey of 4278 caregivers of children ,3 years of age in the paediatric clinic of an urban county hospital for a 5-year period from 1998 to 2003. A total of 1310 respondents had a US-born child with at least one parent born in Mexico. They were compared with a reference group comprised of non-Latino US-born participants (n ¼ 1805). Child hunger and household food insecurity were determined with the US Household Food Security Scale. Results: Young Latino children had much higher rates of child hunger than nonLatinos, 6.8 versus 0.5%. Latino families also had higher rates of household food insecurity than non-Latinos, 53.1 versus 15.6%. Latino children remained much more likely to be hungry (odds ratio (OR) ¼ 13.0, 95% confidence interval (CI) ¼ 5.9-28.7, P , 0.01) and in household food-insecure households (OR ¼ 6.6, 95% CI ¼ 5.2-8.3, P , 0.01) than non-Latinos

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