Food access for families with children in Maryland during first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic

This brief examines the experiences and perspectives of food insecurity among Maryland households with children during the first four months of the pandemic. Many disparities were magnified during the pandemic, and this brief covers the disparities between households with and without children. Food insecurity was measured in 903 households using the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) 6-item tool, in which respondents who say “yes” to two or more of the six questions are categorized as experiencing food insecurity. In this brief, households are grouped into three categories:

• Households with food security at the time of the survey, regardless of prior food insecurity status;
• Households with persistent food insecurity, both in the year before and since the pandemic began;
• Households with new food insecurity, classified as food secure in the year before the pandemic, but having food insecurity after the pandemic’s start.