Abstract
Little is known about food insecurity and the extent of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation in the heterogeneous Asian American population. Using California Health Interview Survey data from the period 2011–20, we examined both issues among low-income Asian American adults from six origin groups: Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, and Vietnamese. We found high and varied levels of overall food insecurity, with the highest burden among Filipino adults (40 percent). Food insecurity by severity was also heterogenous; very low food security affected 2 percent of Chinese adults but 9 percent and 10 percent of Filipino and Japanese adults, respectively. Participation in CalFresh (California-implemented SNAP) ranged from 11 percent and 12 percent among Korean and Chinese adults, respectively, to 20 percent among Vietnamese adults. Compared with English-proficient low-income Asian American adults, those with limited English proficiency were no less likely to participate in CalFresh, possibly reflecting language assistance required by California law and provided by community-based organizations. These results underscore the importance of collecting and reporting disaggregated data by Asian origin group that could inform targeted outreach and interventions.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1420-1430 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Health Affairs |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2023 |
Funding
Milkie Vu was supported by the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (Grant No. T32CA193193). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The authors acknowledge the support that Ellen Bayer, Danny Ta, and Kwang-Youn Kim provided for the manuscript. The California Health Interview Survey data set was made available through the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/. Vu was a 2022 Health Affairs Health Equity Fellowship for Trainees (HEFT) fellow. This article was prepared in partial fulfillment of the requirements of that program. To access the authors’ disclosures, click on the Details tab of the article online. [Published online September 20, 2023.]
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Health Policy
