An Empirical Analysis of Food Insecurity among High School Students in Japan

: Using Population-based Survey of Children in Tokyo

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how household income affects children’s dietary behavior among high-school students from the point of Food Insecurity. The paper uses children and their parents answered survey data from high school students living in metropolitan Tokyo.

The analysis found that household income indirectly affects the number of skipping meals through the experience of being unable to purchase food and child’s working hours. It also revealed that household income, indirectly and directly, affects child’s food intake by mediating the experience of not being able to purchase food, child’s working hours and mother’s working hours.