Improving access to food for low-income families

“Do you sometimes not have enough food to eat?” This is one of the many questions family social science professor Jean Bauer asks food stamp recipients in rural Minnesota. Bauer is leading the Minnesota component of a national study determining access to adequate food (“food security”) among rural low-income families.

Seventeen states are being studied through the USDA-funded project. To Bauer’s dismay, Minnesota has one of the lowest levels of food security. This is surprising, Bauer says, given that Minnesota is a state with high per-capita income and good food programs. “There is something that is creating a disconnect,” says Bauer.

To help explain the low food security in Minnesota, Bauer is examining the support provided to rural food stamp recipients in the areas of housing, family, community, and work. Rural families tend to prize self-sufficiency, Bauer says. She hypothesizes that the culture of independence among rural Minnesotans may isolate them from social support or community assistance that could ease food insecurity.

Bauer will use the results of her research to recommend food stamp policies beneficial to low-income families struggling in rural Minnesota and nationwide. “The reality is, most of these families are working hard to make ends meet, and yet mothers are still going hungry to make sure their children have food,” says Bauer. “Something is wrong with this picture.”

Originally printed in the spring 2005 issue of Kaleidoscope