The Effect of Public Transportation Accessibility on Food Insecurity

I examine whether access to public transportation reduces the probability of food insecurity for households. The data set combines information from the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement and the National Transit Database from 2006 to 2009. I address a potential endogeneity problem using the changes in federal governmental transportation funding as instruments. I find evidence of a negative causal effect of public transportation accessibility on food insecurity. An extra bus-equivalent vehicle per 10,000 people decreases the probability of food insecurity of households by 1.6 percentage points. In particular, the impact of public transit is more prominent among poor households and poor African-American households.