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Cheryl Wehler, MS, Linda F. Weinreb, MD, Nicholas Huntington, MA, Richard Scott, PhD, David Hosmer, PhD, Kenneth Fletcher, PhD, Robert Goldberg, PhD and Craig Gundersen, PhD

Cheryl Wehler, Linda F. Weinreb, Kenneth Fletcher, and Robert Goldberg are with the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester. Nicholas Huntington is with the National Center on Family Homelessness, Newton Center, Mass. Richard Scott is with Honors College, University of Central Arkansas, Little Rock. David Hosmer is with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Craig Gundersen is with the Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Linda F. Weinreb, MD, Department of Family Medicine & Community Health, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Ave N, Worcester, MA 01655 (e-mail: weinrebl{at}ummhc.org).

Objectives. We sought to identify factors associated with adult or child hunger.

Methods. Low-income housed and homeless mothers were interviewed about socioeconomic, psychosocial, health, and food sufficiency information. Multinomial logistic regression produced models predicting adult or child hunger.

Results. Predictors of adult hunger included mothers’ childhood sexual molestation and current parenting difficulties, or "hassles." Risk factors for child hunger included mothers’ childhood sexual molestation, housing subsidies, brief local residence, having more or older children, and substandard housing.

Conclusions. This study found that the odds of hunger, although affected by resource constraints in low-income female-headed families, were also worsened by mothers’ poor physical and mental health. Eliminating hunger thus may require broader interventions than food programs.

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