• develop and modify survey questions to improve estimates of food expenditures, participation in food assistance programs, expenditures on major consumer goods and services, nutritional behavior, and the calculation of food stamp eligibility;
• develop a wide array of data linking food insecurity and detailed family economic and demographic information, including income sources and amounts, employment, family composition changes, and residential location; and
• improve the collection of longitudinal data on family composition, income, use of public assistance, food security, and factors associated with family self-sufficiency on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID).

The PSID, begun in 1968, is a longitudinal study of a representative sample of U.S. individuals (men, women, and children) and the family units in which they reside. It emphasizes the dynamic aspects of economic and demographic behavior, but its content is broad, including sociological and psychological measures. As of 1995, the PSID had collected information about more than 50,000 individuals spanning as much as 28 years of their lives.

The Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, at the University of Michigan and the Economic Research Service have developed new questions and modified existing questions on the PSID questionnaire pertaining to food expenditure and food assistance programs. Both the modification of existing food questions and the addition of other questions are necessary for program and policy analysis. These changes will provide a more complete accounting of food available to the household (either purchased or donated) and participation in food assistance programs which was inadequate in the previous version of the PSID. Initial questionnaire development has been completed. A shortened variant, about one-third as long, of the Food Security Supplement originally executed in conjunction with the Current Population Survey was included. Pretesting of the survey instrument was completed in early 1999 and final data collection was completed in October 1999. The Economic Research Service provides funding through the National Science Foundation.