The Impact of Bonding and Bridging Social Capital on Food Insecurity: An Analysis of 3,008 U.S. Counties

Background and Purpose: Food insecurity is a critical public health crisis, increasing the risk of numerous adverse health outcomes and affecting more than 13% of Americans. While poverty is a major determinant of food insecurity, not all individuals living in poverty experience food insecurity, suggesting non-financial protective factors such as social capital. Existing research on the relationship between social capital and food insecurity is limited by geographically restricted samples and individual measures of social capital. This study addresses these gaps by examining the relationship between food insecurity prevalence and two dimensions of social capital (i.e. bonding and bridging) at the county level.

Methods: Data from Map the Meal Gap (MMG), The Opportunity Insights Social Capital Atlas (SCA), the U.S. Census Bureau, and the USDA Food Environment Atlas were linked on county level FIPS code. The final sample included 3,008 counties, encompassing 96% of all U.S. counties. County level food insecurity prevalence from MMG was categorized into quartiles: low (<11.9%), medium (11.9–14.2%), high (14.2–16.7%), and very high (>16.7%). Economic connectedness from the SCA is measured as the average percentage of cross-socioeconomic status friendships. Social clustering from the SCA captures the density of interconnected social networks within counties. Covariates included age and gender composition, rurality, region, and the percentage of residents in food deserts. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) assessed bivariate relationships, followed by a multinomial logistic regression with very high food insecurity prevalence as the reference category.

Results: Significant differences in social capital measures were observed across food insecurity levels. Multinomial logistic regression results indicated that economic connectedness is a strong protective factor against very high food insecurity. A one-unit increase in economic connectedness was associated with a 17% higher relative risk of a county being classified as having low rather than very high food insecurity prevalence (RRR = 1.17, p < 0.001), with similar but smaller effects for medium (RRR = 1.08, p < 0.001) and high (RRR = 1.03, p < 0.001) food insecurity categories. In contrast, social clustering was associated with increased likelihood of very high food insecurity, with each unit increase linked to lower relative risks of being in the low (RRR = 0.77, p < 0.001), medium (RRR = 0.81, p < 0.001), and high (RRR = 0.85, p < 0.001) food insecurity prevalence categories. The overall model was statistically significant (LRχ² = 2236.42, p < 0.001; pseudo R² = 0.27).

Conclusions and Implications: Findings demonstrate that bridging social capital, operationalized as economic connectedness, is a robust protective factor against very high food insecurity prevalence, while bonding capital, operationalized as social clustering, may reinforce food insecurity in resource constrained communities. These results highlight the importance of distinguishing between dimensions of social capital. Policies and community initiatives that promote inclusive and diverse social networks could play a critical role in reducing county level food insecurity prevalence. Future research should explore causal pathways and examine how individual access to community-level social capital shapes food security outcomes.