Food Insufficiency and Twitter Emotions During a Pandemic

April 3, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic initially caused worldwide concerns about food insecurity. Tweets analyzed in real-time may help food assistance providers target food supplies to where they are most urgently needed. In this exploratory study, we use natural language processing to extract sentiments and emotions expressed in food security-related tweets early in the pandemic in U.S. states. The emotion joy dominated in these tweets nationally, but only anger, disgust, and fear were also statistically correlated with contemporaneous food insufficiency rates reported in the Household Pulse Survey; more nuanced and statistically stronger correlations are detected within states, including a negative correlation with joy.

Publications

The Role of Community Food Services in Reducing U.S. Food Insufficiency in the COVID-19 Pandemic

October 1, 2021

We use state-level Census Household Pulse Survey data to examine the role of community food
services such as food banks and pantries in reducing food insufficiency during the COVID-19
pandemic in the United States. Food insufficiency increased for all income classes during the
pandemic, and especially for the lower and middle classes. We adopt a fixed effects filtered
estimator to estimate the coefficients on time-invariant regressors in a fixed effects panel model.
Estimation results suggest community food services contribute to mitigating food insufficiency,
especially for the middle class and in the early months of the pandemic.

Publications

The Conversation: More Americans couldn’t get enough to eat in 2020 – a change that hit the middle class hardest

September 23, 2021

Americans in households with annual incomes from $50,000 to $75,000 experienced the sharpest increase in food insufficiency when the COVID-19 pandemic began – meaning that many people in the middle class didn’t have enough to eat at some point within the previous seven days, according to our peer-reviewed study that will soon be published in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Publications

Data Report: U.S. Household Food Insufficiency Falls Below Pre-Pandemic Level

September 8, 2021

NERCRD COVID-19 Data Report 21-02: This data brief was released in September 2021, and focuses on U.S. food insufficiency rates at that time, relative to food insufficiency rates before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. food insufficiency rates have fallen to levels below those in the year prior to the pandemic.

12_FoodInsufficiencyOverTime.DataBrief.9-13-2021 Download

Publications

Rural Development Implications One Year After COVID

April 1, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching impacts on most sectors of the U.S. economy, and these impacts have been uneven across rural and urban areas. On the one hand, rural areas were already lagging behind urban areas in many sectors before the pandemic (Ajilore and Willingham, 2019; U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2018), including in terms of educational attainment, access to health care and broadband, and general economic progress (e.g., Dobis et al. 2020; Goetz, Partridge, and Stephens, 2018). On the other hand, lower rural population density and greater reliance on personal as opposed to public transportation likely reduced the rural populations’ exposure to the virus (Goetz et al., 2020). This special theme issue of Choices was commissioned by the Council on Food, Agriculture and Resource Economics (C-FARE) to examine how COVID-19 affected rural areas and prepared in collaboration with the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development on behalf of the Regional Rural Development Centers (RRDCs).

Publications

Data Brief: Pennsylvania Food Insufficiency Reached New High at the End of 2020

February 12, 2021

NERCRD Covid-19 Data Report 21-01: The share of Pennsylvania households in which hunger is a problem has increased to the highest rate since the data were first collected at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey, the share of adults in households where there was either sometimes or often not enough to eat in the last seven days reached a new high of 12.7% on December 19, 2020, just slightly below the national rate on that day (12.9%). In this report we also show how families have adapted to this crisis by accessing free food and how households with different incomes have been affected by rising food insecurity.

11_food-insufficiency-data-brief-2-12-2021-final Download

Publications

Google Searches Reveal Changing Consumer Food Sourcing in the COVID-19 Pandemic

May 21, 2020

In this commentary published in 2021, we examine how consumer interest changed since the advent of the pandemic, by observing Google search trends.

Publications

In the Mid-Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Industry, Market Workers and Local Specialized Freight Truckers May be at Greatest Risk

May 12, 2020

NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief No. 2020-10: This data brief was released during the COVID-19 pandemic and examined data relating to the Mid-Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Industry during that time.

FV-Sector-Vulnerability-Issues-Brief-5-10-20 Download

Publications

Nonmetro COVID-19 Case Growth Higher in Metro-Adjacent Counties, but Case-Fatality Ratio is Lower so Far

May 5, 2020

NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief No. 2020-8: This brief, published in May 2020, offered a snapshot of COVID-19 cases by county type.

covid-19-case-snapshot-by-county-type-may-2020 Download

Publications

Brief: Google Searches Reveal Changing Consumer Food Sourcing in the COVID-19 Pandemic

May 4, 2020

NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief No. 2020-7. This brief was also published as a commentary in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development.

google-searches-changing-food-sourcing-2020 Download

Tag: COVID-19