Effect of household food insecurity on adolescents' behavior problems

Background: Several previous studies have examined the relationship between meal skipping and socio-emotional development of adolescents. However, the measurements for meal skipping do not represent the meal skipping due to poverty. This study focuses on ‘household food insecurity’ to combine meal-skipping and poverty to examine the relationship between the household food insecurity and adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing behavior problems with the moderating effect of community activity.

Method: Korean Children and Youth General Survey data were used for analysis. The total of 2306 adolescents aged between 12 and 18 years were examined. The random effect model was used to estimate the association between the household food insecurity and behavior problems using the measurements of Korea Household Food Security Survey(K-HFSS), Korea Child Behavior Checklist(K-CBCL), and 17 community activities, controlling for sex, age, family income, caregiver’s education, caregiver’s employment status, parent-child affinity, child abuse, and community environment acquaintance.

Results: Of 2306 adolescents in the study, 50.9% reported experiencing household food insecurity, 10.5% had internalizing behavior problems, and 10.1% had externalizing behavior problems. The household food insecurity positively increased both behavior problems. The moderating effect of activity participation was verified that it decreased both behavior problems of household food insecurity adolescents.

Conclusion: The household food insecurity is statistically significant with internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. In addition, the activity participation is statistically significant in decreasing the behavior problems of adolescents. We suggest the encouragement of adolescents’ community participation programs as well as food programs for the household as a whole instead of individual adolescents.