Exploring the dynamics of racial food security gaps in the United States.

Household-level food insecurity is one of the largest public health concerns facing millions of people in the United States today. Although recent work has highlighted gaps in food security rates between minority and non-Hispanic white households, little is known about how these households evolve through the overall distribution of food security over time. As such, we employ nonparametric estimators of distributional mobility to household-level data on food security from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey, Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 study. Results suggest that Hispanic and non-Hispanic white households with children are equally mobile in the long run whereas non-Hispanic black households with children tend to be less upwardly mobile and more downwardly mobile in food security status over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]