RACIAL DISPARITY AND TREND OF FOOD SCARCITY AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Food insecurity is a part of social determinants of health associated with various health conditions. Increase in households with food insecurity has been reported in the COVID-19 pandemic, but the racial disparity and trend of food insecurity during the pandemic remains unclear. METHODS: We conducted an exploratory data analysis of Household Pulse Survey (HPS) from the US Census Bureau. HPS is a biweekly survey of nationally representative samples of adults in the households. US Census Bureau defines “food scarcity” as respondents who reported “sometimes” or “often” not enough to eat in the last 7 days. We created time series plots of the following national estimates over 34 weeks from June 2020 to September 2021 proportion of (1) food scarcity, (2) at-risk of food scarcity, (3) food sufficient groups stratified by race as well as (4) sources of money to buy food (5) experienced/expected unemployment in 4 weeks. RESULTS: Of an estimated average of 249,546,185 US adults per survey, 62.5% were White, 17.1% Hispanic, 11.4% Black, 5.2% Asian, and 3.8% Other. Age between 25-54 was the most common (51.6%) while 22% were 65 and older. Female comprised 51.6%. On average, 12.1% of Hispanic, 14.0% of Black, and 11.3% of Other adults were classified as having food scarcity as compared to 5.3% of White and 3.1% of Asian adults. Time series plots (Figure) suggested that the proportion of food scarcity was incremental from June to December 2020 and began decreasing after December 2020. This trend was seen across all racial groups, but the gaps in food scarcity rates narrowed between Black/Hispanic and White races. CONCLUSIONS: US adults/households suffered from food scarcity amid COVID-19 pandemic but there have been improvements in food scarcity after December 2020. We hypothesize that the observed improvement was not because of food assistance but because US economy started recovering and they started gaining regular income sources. Racial disparity, however, remains to be the concern especially for Black and Hispanic populations.