Williams Institute finds food insecurity prevalent in LGBT community

The Williams Institute at UCLA, which conducts research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy, released a study this week that finds that LGBT people are more likely to suffer from food insecurity than the population in general.
Among the findings, 27 percent, or more than one in four LGBT adults — 2.2 million people by Williams Institute’s estimates — experienced a time in the last year when they did not have enough money for the food that they or their families needed, compared to 17 percent of non-LGBT adults.
More than one in four LGB adults aged 18-44 (27 percent) participated in SNAP, compared to 20 percent of non-LGB adults in the same age range.
Food insecurity is not distributed evenly in the LGBT community: 42 percent of LGBT African-Americans, 33 percent of LGBT Hispanics, 32 percent of LGBT American Indians and Alaskan Natives, 31 percent of women, 30 percent of unmarried individuals, and 33 percent of those raising children are particularly likely to report not having enough money for the food that they or their families needed at some point in the last year. (There is overlap among those groups).