Food Hardship in the US During the Pandemic: What Can We Learn From Real-Time Data?

We study the potential effect of the declaration of the state of emergency, the beginning and end of the stay-at-home orders, and the one-off Economic Impact Payments on food hardship in the US during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. We use daily data from Google Trends for the search ter...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ayllón, Sara, Lado Franco, Samuel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10256/20448
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10256/20448
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Pandèmia de COVID-19, 2020- -- Aspectes econòmics
COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020- -- Economic aspects
Descripción
Sumario:We study the potential effect of the declaration of the state of emergency, the beginning and end of the stay-at-home orders, and the one-off Economic Impact Payments on food hardship in the US during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. We use daily data from Google Trends for the search term “foodbank” and document the development of a hunger crisis, as indicated by the number of individuals who need to locate a food pantry through the internet. The demand for charitable food handouts begins to decrease once families start receiving the stimulus payments, but the biggest fall comes when economic activity resumes after the lifting of the lockdown orders. Our estimates indicate that the increased need for emergency help among vulnerable families lasted for at least 10 weeks during the first wave of the pandemic, and we argue that real-time data can be useful in predicting such urgency