Household Food Insecurity, Coping Strategies, and Happiness: The Case of Two Public Housing Communities

Food insecurity continues to affect a significant number of U.S. households, even during periods of economic growth and prosperity. Household food insecurity in the U.S. is measured with the Food Security Core Survey Module, which reflects the importance of household financial resource con­straint as the ultimate cause of food insecurity. While the module recognizes some of the strategies households employ to cope with food hardships, it hardly encompasses the salient strategies common­ly used by low-income families. The purpose of this study is to identify the major strategies low-income households employ to cope with their food insecurity, and to gain insight into the process they go through toward making ends meet and into how the process may affect their sense of overall happiness. To this end, a survey instrument[1] was developed and administered to low-income house­holds in two public housing communities in Atlanta, Georgia. The results indicated that the majority of the sampled households, even those classified as food secure, report insufficiency of income to cover their monthly expenses. As a consequence, they employed a number of coping strategies to make ends meet. These included forgoing or delaying purchases of non-food items and borrowing or seeking help from friends and relatives. The study also found a mismatch between household self-assessment of their food conditions and food-security level classification. Despite the severity of coping strategies used, some households reported overall happiness with their lives, although, for the majority, the results suggested a positive association between percep­tions of food sufficiency and a sense of overall happiness. [1] The survey instrument it is available from the corresponding author upon request.