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Abstract
Existing literature has solidified the positive correlation between food insecurity and unemployment, but has ignored the way individuals change their labor supply in response to feelings of food insecurity. Standard labor theory says that if an individuals' needs are not being met due to a lack of income, they will respond by increasing their demand for income, potentially mediated through increasing their labor supply. To test the hypothesis that food insecurity causes an increase in labor supply we leveraged the panel nature of the Current Population Survey to employ a linear probability model with fixed effects to control for unobserved household characteristics. Households with very low food security in December had a statistically significant 1.52% increased probability of employment and a 1.38% decreased probability of losing employment in January, and a 10.03% increased probability of gaining employment in February, when compared to households with high food security.