Food insecurity of households with sexual minorities

ABSTRACT

Households with a sexual minority adult may face material difficulties that can lead to an increased risk of food insecurity compared to those without a sexual minority adult. Using data from the 2013–2018 National Health Interview Survey, this study examines the relationship between household food insecurity and the sexual orientation of adult members. The results suggest that households with a male or a female sexual minority adult are more likely to be food insecure than households without a sexual minority adult. Moreover, an increased likelihood of food insecurity due to the presence of a female sexual minority adult is relatively greater than that of a male sexual minority adult.

KEYWORDS:

• Food insecurity
• sexual orientation
• sexual minorities
• National Health Interview Survey

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I10
• I31
• J15

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the Korea Rural Economic Institute for providing excellent research environments for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of any agency of the U.S. or Korean government.

CRediT statement

Seungyeon Cho: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, analysis, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing.

Notes

¹ In the NHIS, food insecurity is measured at the family level, whereas the USDA-FSSM deals with the measure at the household level. To look at the precise household level food insecurity, multifamily households, about 2% in each sample, are dropped from the analytical samples.

² Refer to the USDA-FSSM (USDA-Economic Research Service [USDA-ERS] 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by funding from a research grant [Grant number: 2020-W50] from the Korea Rural Economic Institute.