Food Insecurity and Academic Disruption Among College Students

Abstract

Food insecurity is a growing problem among college students, but little is known about how it is related to academic outcomes. We analyze broad demographics of food insecurity at one institution and explore how food insecurity is associated with whether students have neglected their academics, reduced courses, or considered dropping out of college due to their finances. We then discuss programs that may support food insecure students.

Notes

¹ We ran a correlation matrix and estimated variance inflation factors post-analysis to determine that multi-collinearity is not impacting our results.

² Results were similar in analyses using multinomial logistic regression examining very low and low food security separately compared to being food secure. For ease of presentation and interpretation, we used logistic regression.