Study reveals racial and gender disparities in food insecurity among college students

A study of 1,143 undergraduates at a Brazilian public university has exposed a stark pattern of food insecurity shaped not by a single disadvantage, but by the combined effects of race, gender, income and household vulnerability. Nearly half of the students surveyed—46.0 percent—reported experiencing food insecurity, according to research published in the International Journal for Equity in Health. Black students faced more than three times the odds of food insecurity compared with White students, while low income and highly vulnerable household conditions further intensified the problem. The group facing the greatest burden was low-income Black women, a finding that illustrates how overlapping social inequalities can produce health risks greater than any one factor considered alone.

Food insecurity is often discussed as a question of whether people have enough money to buy food. But the researchers frame it as a broader social and public-health issue: a condition reflecting unequal access to material resources, stability and opportunity. For university students, food insecurity can mean skipping meals, reducing portion sizes, choosing cheaper and less nutritious food, or worrying that food will run out before more money becomes available. These pressures can affect concentration, mental health, physical wellbeing and academic performance. Students may also be reluctant to disclose hardship, particularly when they are expected to manage the transition to independent adulthood while meeting demanding educational requirements.

The study’s focus on intersectionality is central to its findings. Intersectionality is an analytical framework used to examine how systems such as racism, sexism and economic inequality operate together, rather than treating them as separate influences that can simply be added up. A student’s experience is shaped simultaneously by racial identity, gender, household resources and living circumstances. Two students with similar incomes may therefore face different risks because of discrimination, unequal family support, employment opportunities or access to institutional assistance. Conversely, the same racial or gender group may experience very different levels of food insecurity depending on income and household conditions. The researchers designed their analysis to make these interacting patterns visible.

The evidence came from a cross-sectional online survey conducted in 2020 with students at a Brazilian public university. Participants completed a structured questionnaire developed for the research team, providing information on race, gender, age, per-capita income and household circumstances. Food insecurity was assessed with the short version of the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale, a standardized instrument designed to identify inadequate or uncertain access to food. The survey was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Uberlândia, and participation was voluntary. Researchers obtained informed consent and anonymized responses to protect confidentiality. The work received no external funding, and the authors reported no competing interests.

To estimate how different characteristics were associated with food insecurity, the researchers used multivariable logistic regression. This statistical method calculates the odds that an outcome will occur while accounting for several explanatory variables at the same time. The analysis produced an odds ratio of 3.24 for Black students compared with White students, with a 95 percent confidence interval from 1.92 to 5.45. In practical terms, the estimated odds of food insecurity were substantially higher among Black students after considering the variables included in the model. The confidence interval indicates the range of values compatible with the data under the model; because it remained above one, the association was statistically distinguishable from no difference. An odds ratio is not identical to a probability or a risk ratio, but the magnitude points to a pronounced disparity.

Income emerged as another powerful predictor. Students living with fewer resources were more likely to experience food insecurity, as would be expected when food costs compete with rent, transportation, educational materials, healthcare and other essential expenses. The analysis also identified a strong relationship with the household vulnerability indicator used by the researchers. Household vulnerability can capture the broader context in which a student lives, including the extent to which financial shocks or limited support may threaten basic needs. A low-income student in a stable household may have access to assistance that is unavailable to someone facing severe household vulnerability. The study’s results show why income alone cannot fully describe the conditions influencing food access.

The combination of race and household circumstances was particularly consequential. Black students living in highly vulnerable households showed especially elevated levels of food insecurity, suggesting that racial inequality and material disadvantage reinforce one another. The researchers used interaction terms in their regression models to examine these relationships. An interaction occurs when the association between one factor and an outcome changes depending on the level of another factor. In this case, the effect of household vulnerability was not uniform across racial groups. The result challenges approaches that look only at average university-wide prevalence or compare students along one demographic dimension at a time.

The researchers also used equiplots to visualize differences between groups. Equiplots are graphical tools that place distributions or outcome levels side by side, allowing disparities to be compared across multiple categories without reducing the findings to a single overall average. In this study, the visualizations made it easier to see how race, gender and socioeconomic conditions combined. The clearest signal was the concentration of food insecurity among low-income Black women. This does not mean that every member of that group experienced hardship, nor that other students were unaffected. Rather, it identifies a population facing a disproportionately high level of vulnerability and therefore likely to be missed by policies based on broad categories such as “students” or “low-income people.”

Because the research was cross-sectional, it captured conditions at one point in time and cannot establish that any particular factor directly caused food insecurity. The survey was also conducted online in 2020, a period marked by major social and economic disruption, so the findings may not represent every university or every later period. Nonetheless, the large student sample and the use of regression, interaction analysis and disparity visualization provide a detailed picture of how unequal conditions can converge. The authors argue that universities and governments should treat food security and educational security as connected goals. Assistance designed without an equity lens may fail to reach students whose racialized, gendered and household circumstances place them at greatest risk.

The implications extend beyond campus food programs. Emergency meals and financial aid can be vital, but the study suggests that effective responses must also address structural racism, gender inequality and economic insecurity. Universities could use confidential, non-stigmatizing systems to identify need while expanding access to food support, scholarships and affordable housing. Public policies can strengthen income protection and reduce the costs that force students to choose between food and education. Most importantly, interventions should be evaluated across intersecting groups rather than judged only by their average effect. The Brazilian study turns a familiar statistic—almost one student in two experiencing food insecurity—into a sharper warning: when social disadvantages overlap, the students most in need can disappear inside the averages.