2025 Theses Doctoral

Three Essays on Food Insecurity in the United States

Toppenberg, Lauren

This dissertation includes three papers that examine the programs, policies, and contexts that explicitly or implicitly relate to food insecurity in the United States.

Paper I estimates participation in social welfare programs across disability status and examines how access to participation differs by level of unmet food need in the household. Paper II estimates the causal effects of state minimum wage increases on household food security status across varying levels of wage increases and household characteristics. Paper III explores the relationship between food security status and metro-area classification, investigating how distributional differences in individual, household, and state-level characteristics across geographic location influence this relationship.