MULTIGROUP INTERRUPTED TIME SERIES ANALYSIS TO ASSESS THE EFFECT OF US ECONOMIC RECOVERY IN 2021 ON THE RACIAL DISPARITY IN FOOD SCARCITY

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Food insecurity is an important social determinant of health that links to various health conditions and exacerbated by the COVID- 19 pandemic. Our previous (unpublished) study showed a progress on the food scarcity prevalence among US adults after December 2020 when US economy started recovering quickly. We developed a hypothesis that the rapid US economic recovery has had a greater impact on the food scarcity in the vulnerable groups (Hispanic/Black). METHODS: We conducted a secondary data analysis of nationwide US adults using Household Pulse Survey (HPS) from the US Census Bureau. HPS asks about impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on daily lives among US adults. Bi- weekly data tables summarize national estimates of food security and racial differences in their responses. Food scarcity is defined as those reporting “sometimes” or “often” not enough to eat in the last 7 days. We performed multi group interrupted time series analysis to compare the effect of US economic recovery that began in December 2020 on the racial disparity in food scarcity. We chose the vulnerable group (Black/Hispanic) as the treatment group and White as the control group. RESULTS: Among nearly 250,000,000 US adults per 2 weeks, 63% was White, followed by 17% Hispanic, and 5% Black. The food scarcity rate in the control group was incremental by 0.3% per 2 weeks in the pre-intervention period (b = 0.003, p < 0.001) but it started decreasing by 0.4% per 2 weeks in the post-intervention period (b = -0.004, p < 0.001). Figure shows the effect of economic recovery on the food scarcity rate between races. Black/Hispanic group had 0.10- point higher rate of food scarcity at the beginning (b = 0.10, p < 0.001) but showed an additional 0.5%-point decrement per 2 weeks in food scarcity rate on top of the baseline effect of 0.4% decrement (b = -0.005, p = 0.019) in the post- intervention. CONCLUSIONS: The gap in food scarcity between White and Hispanic/ Black groups decreased after US economy started recovering in December 2020. Our results indicate that the economic recovery provided the vulnerable group with additional benefits to reduce food scarcity.