The Probability of Food Security: A new longitudinal data set using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics

2025-09-07

AI Summary

A longstanding lack of longitudinal, individual- or household-level data has hindered dynamic analyses of food security in the United States. This study addresses this gap by constructing, for the first time, a 40-year household-level probabilistic food security (PFS) panel dataset using 26 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID, 1979–2019). We innovatively adapt the PFS metric to long-term longitudinal data and employ multiple imputation alongside fixed-effects and random-effects panel models for robust estimation. The dataset enables fine-grained decomposition by geography, race, gender, education, and other dimensions, supporting high-temporal-resolution trend analysis. Results systematically document national and subgroup-level food security trajectories across economic recessions and major policy interventions, precisely identifying key vulnerable populations—including low-income households, racial/ethnic minorities, and single-parent families—and their heterogeneous responses. These findings provide rigorous empirical foundations for evidence-based, targeted food security policy design.

Technology Category

Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social ScienceMultiagent Systems: Agent-Based Simulation and Emergent BehaviorHumans and AI: Planning and Decision Support for Human-Machine Teams

Application Category

Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurementsUser Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Studies of user behavior, including longitudinal effects of personalized systemsEconomics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Data quality aspects of human-annotated datasets

Abstract

The study of food security dynamics in the U.S. has long been impeded by the lack of extended longitudinal observations of the same households or individuals. This paper applies a newly-introduced household-level food security measure, the probability of food security (PFS), to 26 waves of Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data, spanning 1979-2019, to generate a data product we describe and make newly available to the research community. We detail the construction of this unprecedentedly long food security panel data series in PSID data. Finally, we estimate key subpopulation- and national-level food security dynamics identifiable over the 40-year (1979-2019) period spanning multiple recessions and federal nutrition assistance policy changes, including disaggregated dynamics based on geography, race, sex, and educational attainment.

Problem

• Lack of longitudinal household food security data in U.S.
• Creating 40-year food security panel dataset from PSID
• Analyzing food security dynamics across demographics and policy periods

Innovation

• Newly-introduced household-level food security measure
• Applied to 26 waves of PSID data
• Generated unprecedentedly long food security panel