University of Wisconsin - Extension

MADISON - Marcy shakes the box of Cheerios. Maybe there will be just enough for supper, she thinks to herself. She rummages around the top shelf of the cupboard, looking for the little yellow bowls. They are smaller than the white ones she'd used for breakfast, and yellow is such a cheerful color ... maybe if she uses those, the kids won't notice that there isn't as much cereal in them.

Is Marcy's story real? Judith Bartfeld can assure you that similar scenes are unfolding across Wisconsin every day.

Bartfeld, an associate professor of consumer science who joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW Extension in 1997, is currently engaged in a number of projects that link hunger with state and community characteristics such as housing costs, the unemployment rate, poverty levels, and whether or not schools offer breakfast programs.

"I think there's real power in being able to demonstrate a correlation between, say, a lack of affordable housing in a county and a high percentage of people who are hungry, or who don't know where their next meal is coming from," she says.

The term that social scientists use for the latter characteristic is "food insecurity," and it is Bartfeld's research specialty. In cooperation with UW Extension, Bartfeld co-directs the Wisconsin Food Security Project, an interactive Web site that acts as a clearinghouse, providing up-to-date county- and state-level statistics about food security, economic well-being, and the availability and use of public and private programs to increase access to affordable and nutritious foods.

Bartfeld says that as a whole, the state of Wisconsin fares better than average in terms of accessibility to food, in part because of the below-average poverty level in the state. The rate of food insecurity here is a little more than 8 percent, compared with, for example, Oregon's 13.7 percent, Utah's 15.2 percent, Texas's 14.8 percent and Mississippi's 14.8 percent, she says.

Nonetheless, Bartfeld is quick to point out that food insecurity is a significant problem for some people in Wisconsin. Her research has found that:

• Almost one-third of single-parent families are food insecure.

• Close to one-third of all poor households in Wisconsin experience food insecurity.

• Households with children are twice as likely to be food insecure as those without children.

• African Americans have more than four times the food insecurity rate of white households, a disparity higher in Wisconsin than nationwide, Bartfeld says.

• If you are an African-American single mother living in a central urban area and are poor, you have a 73 percent chance of experiencing food insecurity.

Now, however, Bartfeld is refocusing her research to focus on how - and why - food insecurity varies among communities throughout Wisconsin.

"National surveys don't have large enough samples to look at small areas, so we are collecting our own data through elementary schools, working together with UW Extension county offices," she says. The work focuses on 14 counties, including Adams, Columbia, Eau Claire, Florence, Forest, Oneida and Racine, among others. Students at close to 40 participating schools take surveys home for their parents to fill out.

Her current path of research represents a shift for Bartfeld, who began her career by studying child-support policy.

"I was always interested in the economic well-being of single parents and their children," she says. "Hunger emerged as such a striking concern for that group that I decided to pursue it."

Today, she hopes that the personnel of nonprofit organizations, government employees, policy makers, educators and members of the general public will find her data useful. While she has no definitive numbers just yet, Bartfeld suspects that affordable housing - or lack of it - plays a critical role in whether or not families are hungry. Bartfeld says the feedback this work provides is important to communities.

"By working with county Extension offices, we have a built-in way of sharing results with the communities," she says. "Hopefully, we'll not only be able to increase awareness of hunger issues, but also offer concrete ideas for what communities can do about it."