Parents of young children are concerned about access to food
Since April 2020, we have been using the RAPID Survey Project to ask families with young children about their ability to meet basic needs. In mid-2022, we saw a rise in the number of parents reporting at least one material hardship. RAPID measures material hardship by asking parents if they are experiencing difficulty paying for basic needs, such as food, housing, utilities, child care, healthcare, and wellness activities.
Download the complete fact sheet for direct quotes from survey participants and more.
Along with the overall rise in material hardship, we saw a specific increase in the number of families experiencing difficulty accessing food. Families’ food hardships have persisted, and in 2024, more than one in five families reported difficulty accessing food.
To better understand these experiences of hardship and difficulty accessing food, we expand on these findings in this fact sheet by exploring where families are purchasing groceries and looking at differences in food access by income level and residential location.
Lower-income families report less access to grocery sources
In March 2023, RAPID asked parents with young children nationally about the types of stores they visit regularly (every two weeks or more often) to purchase groceries for their family. The question asked: In the past month, how often did someone in your household buy groceries from each of the following sources? Parents could select more than one type of store in their response and indicated the frequency that they bought food from that source.
Convenience stores and pharmacies serve as grocery sources for many families, and for lower-income families in particular. More than one in three (36%) lower-income families reported regularly purchasing groceries from convenience stores, compared to 22% of middle-to-higher-income families. Nearly a quarter of lower-income families (24%) reported regularly purchasing groceries from pharmacies, compared to 17% of middle-to-higher-income families.
Lower-income families were also less likely than middle-to-higher-income families to report having easy access (defined as a short walk or drive from home) to places to buy groceries.
These findings support other research that has shown that lower-income families have more limited access to affordable, nutritious food and rely more on smaller neighborhood stores that may not carry healthy foods or may offer healthy foods at higher prices.
Families living in rural areas report lower access to grocery sources
RAPID surveys include questions about where families live to better understand how families’ experiences differ across the country. Families living in rural areas reported much lower access to supermarkets (44%) than families in urban areas (81%).
Notably, rural and urban parents also differed based on income levels: nearly half (49%) of the rural families who participated in the survey were lower income, which was higher than the proportion of lower-income families in urban areas (36%).
Other research shows that rural families experience higher rates of hunger than families living in other areas. Taken with the findings about access to grocery stores, the data show that families who are struggling the most to pay for food also have the lowest access to grocery sources.
Many parents of young children are concerned about getting food for their families
Since RAPID launched in 2020, we have asked parents this open-ended question: What are the biggest challenges and concerns for you and your family right now?
Using Structural Topic Modeling, an innovative approach to analyzing parents’ answers to open-ended questions, we identified the most common themes in parents’ responses related to food access, and examined how these themes are different between demographic groups.
We found that parents frequently raised concerns about food access. Among the most prevalent concerns about food access were the high cost of food, difficulty affording food, and concerns about food programs ending.
Lower-income families were more likely than middle- and higher-income families to raise these food-related concerns.
Topics extracted from parents’ open-ended responses related to food experiences, by topic prevalence:
— High cost of food
— Difficulty affording food
— Concerns about losing food benefits
— Concerns about food quality and nutrition
Conclusion
Families with young children are experiencing hunger and facing limited options of where to get food. Lower-income families and families living in rural areas are most likely to experience hunger and food hardship and have limited access to grocery sources.
Having stable and routine access to healthy, nutritious foods is essential to healthy early childhood development. Supporting families with young children to consistently meet basic needs, like food, can improve families’ economic circumstances as well as the physical health and emotional well-being of parents and young children.
A previous RAPID fact sheet reported that rates of food hardship were lowest when federal food-related programs and policies were in place, such as expanded SNAP and WIC benefits, paused work requirements for food benefits, and provided universal free school meals. RAPID data showed that when the policies ended in 2022, hunger and material hardship rates began to increase. This suggests that protections like these addressed the cost and access factors that contributed to hardship and hunger and underscores the importance of continuing these measures to support the development that is so essential in early childhood.
Download the complete fact sheet for direct quotes from survey participants and more.