Food Insufficiency and Income Volatility in U.S. Households

Dahl, Molly, et al. Food Insufficiency and Income Volatility in U.S. Households: The Effects of Imputed Earnings in the Survey of Income and Program Participation.  Congressional Budget Office    March 2012, Working Paper 2012-07   Congressional Budget Office

"This paper explores how the use of imputed earnings data to measure income in the Survey of Income and Program Participation affects the observed relationship between household income volatility and food insufficiency. The study finds that the inclusion of imputed earnings data when measuring income volatility substantially understates the association between large drops in household income and food insufficiency. After excluding observations with imputed earnings, large drops in income are associated with a 1.3 percentage point increase in the probability of food insufficiency, although the estimate is not statistically significant at conventional levels."