In 2018, Caitlin Caspi started a five-year research project looking at how raising the minimum wage could impact nutrition-related health outcomes.

Caspi is an associate professor of allied health sciences in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (CAHNR), associate director of InCHIP, and the director of food security initiatives for the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health.

Caspi compared Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the city legislature approved a $15 minimum wage, and Raleigh, North Carolina, where they had not. These two cities have comparable demographics.

The hypothesis was that increasing the minimum wage would increase people’s economic stability. This would theoretically lead to less food insecurity and an increased ability to purchase more nutritious foods, leading to better health outcomes.

The study was upended by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Because of changes to wages during the pandemic, especially for groups like frontline workers, across the United States, and increased support programs for food and housing, the researchers did not find any significant changes associated with the minimum wage increasing.

“Because the pandemic happened right in the middle of the whole study, any changes we saw were likely attributable to the pandemic,” Caspi says. “We didn’t see a minimum wage effect.”

This research was published in SSM Population Health.

However, the researchers did still make significant findings during this period.

“We did see some interesting changes and patterns, particularly related to food insecurity, receipt of benefits, and benefit increases that were offered during COVID,” Caspi says.

Violeta Chacón, a postdoctoral researcher working with Caspi, led a related study focusing specifically on the connection between housing instability and food insecurity during this period.

These findings were published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.

This study represents one of the first efforts to look at this association with such a large sample (nearly 1,000 individuals) across multiple years.

A longer-term study of food insecurity and housing instability is useful since these are not static categories.

“[Paying rent] is going to set the conditions for the rest of that month’s household spending,” Caspi says. “Rental payments could have been changed during the pandemic for a variety of reasons. So, we had reasons to think that these were connected, not in continuous, linear ways, but in more complex, disruptive ways.”

Chacón’s study found that people who experienced food insecurity or housing instability were more likely to experience these hardships again in the future.

She also found that there was a negative association between the two variables across years. This means that someone experiencing food insecurity or housing instability one year was less likely to experience housing instability or food insecurity, respectively, in the following year.

This somewhat unexpected finding prompted the researchers to consider possible explanations.

“For example, families who were experiencing housing instability might be seeking out housing assistance programs, which could free up more income for other necessities, which include food,” Chacón says.

This effect may have also been exacerbated by the increased availability of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program), rental assistance programs, and the eviction moratorium during the pandemic.

“These results suggest that the expansion of nutrition assistance programs coordinated with other safety net programs could provide critical protection from these hardships,” Chacón says. “Because, as we were seeing, people who were experiencing one of these hardships, the other hardship was alleviated in the subsequent years.”

Looking more broadly, food insecurity levels were at their lowest throughout the U.S. in 2021 thanks expanded benefits. Returning to a more expansive program could help alleviate food insecurity in the country on a more permanent basis.

“One of the things that this study suggests is that those assistance programs that were unusual during those times could provide critical protection,” Chacón says. “It gives us an idea that it could be done.”

This work relates to CAHNR’s Strategic Vision area focused on Enhancing Health and Well-Being Locally, Nationally, and Globally.

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