Food Insecurity

Access to nutritious food is a necessity for a healthy and prosperous lifestyle. Research has demonstrated that good nutrition is essential for healthy physical and social development. The Economic Research Service reports that households experiencing food insecurity have been characterized as likely to worry that they will run out of food, and often the food they are able to purchase does not last. Without food access, an individual faces disadvantages economically, socially, and in terms of their health.

Peer City Perspective

Louisville currently ranks 5th among its peer cities in food insecurity with 16.1% of residents experiencing food insecurity. Additionally, Louisville ranks 2nd in rates of children who live in a household experiencing food insecurity with a rate of 17%. The USDA defines food insecurity as lacking enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle for all members of the household.

Louisville ranks among the middle tier on food insecurity according to a natural breaks algorithm. Additionally, Louisville ranks among the top tier on child food insecurity according to a natural breaks algorithm. Cities in green are those that outperform their peers, cities in yellow represent the middle cluster, and those in red are a group that lags behind its peers on this indicator.

Trends Over Time

Louisville’s rate of food insecurity has decreased from 2013 to 2015. During this time period, Louisville’s rate of food insecurity was lower than its peer city average. Similar trends are observed in the food insecurity rates of children. In terms child food insecurity, Louisville’s rate is far below that of the 25th percentile of its peers.

Continue Exploring with Related Data

Food Deserts

Food Environment Index

Children Ages 0-17 in Poverty

Multidimensional Poverty

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Natural Breaks Algorithm

For each indicator, Greater Louisville Project assigns cities into one of three groups (high-performing, middle-of-the-pack, and low-performing) based on how they compare to other cities. The assignment is based on how cities naturally cluster on that indicator. Sometimes, the differences between cities are very small, and the difference between a city ranked 5th and 6th could simply be a matter of the sampling error that arises from using survey data. Thus, rather than always make a division that declares the top 5 to be the top tier, we use a natural breaks algorithm to look for a cluster of cities that is outperforming the rest, a cluster that is about average, and a cluster that is lagging. This clustering gives us a better indication of where Louisville is thriving and where Louisville has room to learn from cities that are doing better.

Z-Scores

Z-scores (or standardization) is a way to combine data with different units of measurement into a single index. The z-score is a measure of how far away a city (or census tract, etc.) is from the average city. In order to be comparable across different units of measurement, the z-score is the distance from the mean measured in standard deviations (e.g. if Louisville has a z-score of 1 it means Louisville is 1 standard deviation above the mean of its peer cities).

Data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings use z-scores and all z-scores are relative to the mean of Louisville's peer cities. (On the County Health Rankings site z-scores are relative to all the counties in each state - thus z-scores reported by GLP will be different, because we are using a different reference group). The Greater Louisville Project also uses z-scores in our multidimensional poverty index, which compares each census tract to the mean of all census tracts in Louisville.