Determinants of Household Food Insecurity in Rural Areas of the Hilly Region of Kumaun, Uttarakhand, India: A Pilot Study

Children's Educational Outcomes and Persistence and Severity of Household Food Insecurity in India: Longitudinal Evidence from Young Lives

BACKGROUND

Food insecurity is a pressing global challenge with far-reaching consequences for health and well-being. However, little attention has focused specifically on the experiences of children and adolescents over the age of 5 y in food insecure households.

OBJECTIVES

We examine whether the persistence and severity of household food insecurity are negatively associated with children's educational outcomes.

METHODS

We used data for the younger cohort of the longitudinal Young Lives data from rounds 3 (2009), 4 (2013), and 5 (2016), when children were aged 8 y, 12 y, and 15 y, respectively. Drawing on the Household Food Insecurity and Access Scale, we used descriptive statistics, graphical analysis, and multilevel regressions to document how the persistence and severity of household food insecurity are associated with children's educational outcomes (years of education, maths, and vocabulary [PPVT] test scores). We controlled for potentially confounding sociodemographic characteristics, including children's own baseline grade attained and test scores in "value-added" models, to provide robust estimates of household food insecurity in predicting children's educational outcomes.

RESULTS

Household food insecurity generally declined between 2009 and 2016. Fewer than 50% of households were food secure across the 3 rounds of data we examined. Our robust, multivariate, value-added models show that the persistence and severity of food insecurity are negatively associated with all 3 children's educational outcomes we examined.

CONCLUSIONS

We add to a small but growing literature exploring how household food insecurity is associated with children's educational outcomes in the Global South. Our findings on severity of food insecurity highlight the importance of understanding food insecurity along the severity continuum rather than as a dichotomous state, as previously done in existing literature. Addressing household food insecurity in childhood and adolescence may be a key factor to improve children's educational outcomes.

Impacts of community-level grassroots organizations on household food security during the COVID-19 epidemic period in China

Purchasing food via community-level grassroots organizations was a new pattern of food patronage for Wuhan residents during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, but little attention was paid to it. The study examined the relationship between community-level grassroots organizations and household food insecurity based on an online survey of household food insecurity in Wuhan in March 2020. The study found that problems in all three domains of food insecurity including food anxiety, insufficient quality and inadequate quantity existed but were uneven. Community-level grassroots organizations played an important role in promoting food security including reducing worries about food supply and providing enough food intake, but did not ensure households had adequate food quality due to increasing food prices, fewer varieties of food and decreased food freshness. Compared to other grassroots organizations, the community committee had actually become an extension of the government to run administrative grassroots affairs before the epidemic, so its tight relationship with local government made it become the major grassroots power in ensuring household food security at the residential community level.

Household Food Security and Associated Factors among Portuguese Children

This study investigated the household food insecurity (HFI) among Portuguese children following the last world financial crisis. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 4737 Portuguese children (3-11 yrs). Socio-demographics, food insecurity, and household geographic location were assessed via questionnaire. Nutritional status was measured. Following the economic crisis, 14.2% of school children and 12.0% of preschool children experienced HFI. Preschool children having parents with low and medium parental education (paternal: OR = 4.4; 95% CI 2.7-7.1 and OR = 2.4; 95% CI 1.5-3.6; maternal: OR = 2.2; 95% CI 1.4-3.5 and OR = 1.6; 95% CI 1.1-2.3), living in the south (OR = 1.4; 95% CI 1.0-2.0) and being overweight/obese (OR = 1.1; 95% CI 0.7-1.3) were more likely to experience HFI than food secure household peers. Higher OR of belonging to a food insecure household were observed in school-aged children with low and medium parental education (paternal: OR = 2.9; 95% CI 1.9-4.6 and OR = 1.7; 95% CI 1.1-2.5; maternal: OR = 2.5; 95% CI 1.6-3.9 and OR = 2.3; 95% CI 1.6-3.3), living in Coimbra (OR = 1.7; 95% CI 1.1-2.6) and being overweight/obese (OR = 1.3; 95% CI 0.8-1.5) compared to food secure household peers. Data are instructive and support the need to increase awareness of HFI, reduce its incidence in overweight/obese children from low socio-economic status families and specific geographic areas, and increase food availability based on local ecology.