COVID-19

Publications

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

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.

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Publications

Rural Development Implications One Year After COVID

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).

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Publications

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

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.

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Publications

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

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

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Publications

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

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.

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Publications

Google Searches Predict Initial Unemployment Insurance Claims

NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief No. 2020-5: The COVID-19 pandemic produced historically unprecedented numbers of layoffs, leading to surges in the number of unemployment filings: over 26 million Americans have filed claims for unemployment benefits (New York Times, 4/23/2020). In this brief we show how Google Trends searches predated or anticipated these filings, and how they were propagated across the different states as the coronavirus took its toll.

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Publications

Brief: Americans’ Food Spending Patterns Explain Devastating Impact of COVID-19 Lockdowns on Agriculture

NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief No. 2020-9. This brief is also published as a commentary in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development.

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Publications

Rural Broadband Investment Urgently Needed in the COVID-19 Crisis

NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief No. 2020-6 – Issued jointly with the Regional Rural Development. By S.J. Goetz, H.M. Stephens, S.J. Rocker, R. Welborn, S. Turner, D. Albrecht and M. Skidmore, April 28, 2020.

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