Understanding the double burden: a mixed method analysis of overlapping food and housing insecurity among college students at a minority serving institution

ABSTRACT

This article examines the findings of a study of basic needs (in)security among students at a large, minority-serving university in the American Southwest. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study measures the prevalence of and examines the demographic patterns in both food and housing insecurity, as well as their co-occurrence, which we call the double burden. Using multinomial logistic regression analysis, this study finds a significant co-occurrence of food and housing insecurity among several demographic groups, especially racial and ethnic minority groups and LGBTQ students. Qualitative data from focus groups are presented to contextualize these findings and to present student experiences with basic needs insecurity. Study results suggest that students experience overlapping insecurities in their access to food and housing, and that these insecurities are patterned in ways that mirror educational inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Food security
• housing security
• inequality
• basic needs
• mixed-methods

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible with funding from the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Chancellor at the University of New Mexico, and was partially supported by the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center Support Grant NCI P30CA118100 and the Behavioral Measurement and Population Sciences shared resource. We received research assistance from Shoshana Adler Jaffe and statistical support from Lee Van Horn and the UNM College of Education Methodology Group.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 UNM uses the following race/ethnicity categories: White, Hispanic, Asian, African American, American Indian, two or more races, and “Non-resident alien” to capture international students regardless of race/ethnicity. In our reporting here we’ve revised the last category to “international student”. We also use American Indian and Native American interchangeably here.

2 We are mindful of gender inclusive data collection and recognize that the use of discrete gender categories can perpetuate administrative violence against gender non-conforming students (Ford et al., 2020). To counter this we used multiple gender options plus an option for participants to write in their self-identified gender, which we classified as “other”.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Marygold Walsh-Dilley

Marygold Walsh-Dilley is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography & Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico (UNM).

Kathryn E. Coakley

Kathryn E. Coakley is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Consultant in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UNM.

Heather Mechler

Heather Mechler is Director of the Office of Institutional Analytics at UNM.

Sarita Cargas

Sarita Cargas is Associate Professor in the Honors College at UNM. They are the founding members of the UNM Basic Needs Project.