Food Insecurity in Mississippi: Examining the Relationship between Food Insecurity and Race

Author

Cady CooperFollow

Date of Award

Summer 8-26-2020

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Public Policy Leadership

First Advisor

Joseph “Jody” Holland

Second Advisor

Catarina Passidomo

Third Advisor

Kathy Knight

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

The relationship between food insecurity and race is examined in this thesis. The author analyzes the history and background of food and race in Mississippi to bring about a recommendation to change policy. An analysis of USDA data as well as a spatial analysis was used as the primary method for investigating the relationship between race and food insecurity in Mississippi. The findings indicate that, in the urban setting, at ½ mile, 61% of whites are food insecure, and in the urban setting, at the 1 mile, 64% of whites are food insecure. In urban settings, the White population of Mississippians are the ones who are most likely to be food insecure. However, in rural populations in Mississippi, African Americans are those who are most likely to be food insecure. This led to the realization that due to these findings, institutionalized racism was not the leading factor in race related food insecurity. This led the author to identify poverty and as a leading issue with food insecurity in Mississippi. The findings in this thesis lead to policy recommendations for both urban and rural Mississippi. For these policies to be effective, systemic poverty must be addressed, and access needs to be extended in different methods depending on the area of Mississippi affected.

Recommended Citation

Cooper, Cady, "Food Insecurity in Mississippi: Examining the Relationship between Food Insecurity and Race" (2020). Honors Theses. 1610.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1610

Accessibility Status

Searchable text

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License