Description:
Oregon’s high hunger and food insecurity rates have been a concern
throughout the last decade. These high rates earned Oregon the dubious distinction as
the most food insecure with hunger state in the late 1990’s. While Oregon’s ranking
has improved in recent years, our understanding of why Oregon ranked so highly on
such a distressing measurement is still being explored. Recent research has improved
our understanding of food insecurity and hunger through the identification of some
key socioeconomic conditions that correlate with increased likelihoods of household
food insecurity (Tapogna, Suter, Nord, and Leachman, 2004). These socioeconomic
conditions include: the rate of households that moved within a year, the state peak
unemployment rates, the state poverty rates, the rate of renters spending over half of
their income on rent, the state’s racial demographics, and the fraction of population
under 18 years old. This paper utilizes this state level model to evaluate whether
similar county-scaled socioeconomic conditions produce useful estimates of food
insecurity and hunger. To accomplish such an objective, this analysis: 1) assesses the
complexity in utilizing this state level model to predict county level food insecurity
and hunger rates, 2) constructs county estimates derived from the socioeconomic
model defined in Tapogna et al. (2004), and 3) assesses the county level estimates by
comparing the results with available region-and-county level data relevant to food
insecurity and hunger.
This examination is the first step in providing policymakers and county
administrators with a broad and useable predictive equation to estimate the severity of
food insecurity and hunger at the county level within Oregon.