Clusters of Sociodemographic Characteristics and Their Association with Food Insecurity in Mexican University Students

Abstract

Food insecurity (FI) expresses irregular access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. We analyze the association between clusters of sociodemographic characteristics and FI in university students from Mexico. The Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale was applied, and household type, socioeconomic status (SES), and the characteristics of the head of the household, among others, were asked in a cross-sectional study. We performed Two-Step cluster analysis and logistic regression models. We included 466 university students (72.5% women, 47% with FI). We identified three clusters; Cluster-1 (n = 163) included a single-parent (37.4%) or co-resident/roommate (27%) household type, middle SES (63.2%); the head of the household is usually a woman (76.1%), single (71.8%), and with bachelor's degree (41.7%) or less educational level (46.6%). Cluster-2 (n = 144) included the nuclear (89.6%) household type, high SES (76.4%); the head of the household is usually a man (79.2%), in a relationship (99.3%), and with a bachelor's degree (63.2%) or graduate level (33.3%). Cluster-3 (n = 147) is very similar to Cluster-2. The difference is that Cluster-3 includes middle SES (70.1%), and the head of the household's educational level is high school or less (100%). Only belonging to Cluster-1 was positively associated with FI (OR = 1.96, 95%CI: 1.24, 3.09). These results show the interrelationships between multiple sociodemographic characteristics and should contribute to developing interventions that simultaneously address numerous sociodemographic factors to diminish FI in university students.

Keywords: cluster analysis; college students; food insecurity; food security; sociodemographic characteristics; university students.

Figure 1

Frequency of food security/insecurity in university students according to the Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale (n = 466).

Figure 2

Frequency of food security/insecurity according to the three clusters of sociodemographic characteristics. (a) The frequency of food security/insecurity according to the clusters; (b) the frequency of food security and FI (mild, moderate, and severe) according to the three clusters. The difference between both the categorical variables was analyzed with Chi-square. We also compared the column proportions with the z-test. The values that do not share the same subscript letter differ significantly (p < 0.05).