Project: Causes and Consequences of Food Insufficiency After Welfare Reform
Award Year: 1999
Amount of award, fiscal 1999: $200,354.00
Institution: University of Michigan
Principal Investigator: Kristine Siefert
Status: Completed
Detailed Objective: Food assistance and nutrition policies can be strengthened by a better understanding of the determinants of food insecurity and the link between food security and welfare reform. This work will address several issues involving welfare reform and food insufficiency, including:
  • the number of welfare families that have difficulties meeting their food, shelter, and other basic needs 1, 2 and 3 years after they are observed in the welfare rolls;
  • how food insecurity and material hardship vary with recipients' work, welfare, and income trajectories;
  • how mothers and children in food-insecure families differ in terms of physical and mental health and child development from those in food-secure families.

The research team will use the Women's Employment Survey, a longitudinal survey of female welfare recipients in Michigan, to address these questions. By using a longitudinal survey, researchers will be better able to look at both the short-term and longer term food insecurity status of low-income mothers and children. A grant was awarded to the The Regents of the University of Michigan at a cost of $200,354 in fiscal 1999. The expected completion date is December 2001.

Topic: Food Security
Output:
Heflin, C. "Dynamics of Material Hardship in the Women's Employment Survey," Social Service Review, Vol. 80, No. 3, September 2006.
Heflin, C., M. Corcoran, and K. Siefert. “Work Trajectories, Income Changes, and Food Insufficiency in a Michigan Welfare Population,” Social Science Review, Vol. 81, No. 1, March 2007.
Siefert, K., and M. Corcoran. "Food Insufficiency and Material Hardship in Post TANF Welfare Families," Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 60, No. 4, 1999.
Siefert, K., C. Heflin, M. Corcoran, and D. Williams. "Food Insufficiency and Physical and Mental Health in a Longitudinal Survey of Welfare Recipients," Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 45, No. 2, June 2004.
Siefert, K., C. Heflin, M. Corcoran, and D. Williams. "Food Insufficiency and the Physical and Mental Health of Low-Income Women," Welfare, Work, and Well-Being, M. Lennon, ed., The Haworth Medical Press, 2001.
Siefert, K., C. Heflin, M. Corcoran, and D. Williams. "Food Insufficiency and the Physical and Mental Health of Low-Income Women," Women & Health, Vol. 32, Nos. 1 and 2, 2001.