If You Build It, Will They Come? Access to the Summer Food Service Program and Food Insecurity Among Low Income Households with Children

Background: The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) offers free meals and snacks to children over the summer when school is not in session. Thus, the program is a vital resource to low income children who may not have access to affordable and healthy food when the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs are not operating. However, although it has been in operation for more than 40 years, there has been almost no research on whether the SFSP affects household food insecurity. In the wake of the Great Recession, rates of food insecurity skyrocketed and have remained high: in 2012, children were food insecure in over 20% of low-income households with children. Because participation in the SFSP is very low compared to other nutrition programs like SNAP, evidence of its impact would provide a credible rationale for expanding the program as a means to reduce food insecurity. Thus, this study investigates whether geographic access to SFSP program sites is associated with household food insecurity in low income households with children.

Methods: The study uses data from two data sources: administrative data from the State of California's Summer Food Service Program and individual-level data from the 2011-2012 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), which is a representative phone-based surveillance survey. Based on geo-coding of CHIS respondent addresses and SFSP program sites, it assesses whether access to the SFSP is associated with low or very low household food security among CHIS households with children living below 200% of the poverty line. It uses three measures of access: driving time to the nearest SFSP site; the number of sites reachable within 60 minutes; and, an accessibility score for each respondent (calculated using a gravity model as a summative function of the provision of meals at nearby SFSP program sites, discounted by the driving time necessary to reach these sites.) It measures household food security using a standard 6-item measure developed by the United States Department of Agriculture. All analyses control for multiple sociodemographic factors, participation in other nutrition programs, an index of neighborhood deprivation, and indicators for county of residence.

Results: Results indicate that driving distance to the nearest site is not associated with either low or very low household food security. However, the number of sites reachable within an hour and the accessibility score are both associated with significant decreases in the probability of low household food security. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in accessibility was associated with a decreased probability of household food insecurity of about 0.02, a nearly 5% decline.

Conclusions: The results of this study make an important contribution to the literature by demonstrating that access to the SFSP is associated with lower probability of household food insecurity for low-income households. These findings provide preliminary evidence for policy makers who might consider adopting measures to help improve access to the SFSP as a means to reduce food insecurity.