Archive: Sep 2021

First-generation college students, or students whose parents did not receive a bachelor’s degree, make up a large portion of the student population. About a third of all undergraduate students are first-generation. Here at the University of Minnesota, first-gen students make up a quarter of our undergrad student body. First-gen students face a unique set of challenges as they enter college, including more academic and financial challenges than their peers. Surprisingly, despite their exposure to more stressors, new evidence shows that they do not experience more depressive symptoms. 

Tabitha Wilbur used data from the The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine differences between first-generation and continuing-generation students’ exposure to stressors and depressive symptoms. Wilbur looks at the relationship between stress and depressive symptoms both before and after students enter college. 

Before college, first-generation students are more likely to be exposed to stressors like financial strain, unmet needs, or unsafe neighborhoods. They are also more likely to exhibit depressive symptoms. During college, first-generation students are also more likely to experience stressors such as student loan debt or housing insecurity. Despite this increased stress, however, during college first-generation students do not exhibit more depressive symptoms than their peers.Despite increased stress during college first-generation students do not exhibit more depressive symptoms than their peers.

Wilbur suggests that first-generation students’ relatively low depressive symptoms, compared to their stress exposure, may result from the assets they bring to college. As a result of earlier stress exposure, these students may have developed resilience that prepares them to handle college stressors. They also might feel more hopeful or grateful about the opportunities that college provides, compared to peers whose parents have a bachelor’s degree.

First-generation students are an important part of the student body at colleges and universities across the country. As faculty, administrators, and peers seek to better support first-generation students, Wilbur’s research is an important reminder to attend to their strengths and the positive contributions  that first-generation students are making to college communities.

Discussions of cities and food availability have long centered on the idea  that poor residents are likely to live in “food deserts,” areas of concentrated poverty with few food outlets. A new study of grocery stores in Metro Atlanta examines this idea, showing how spatial location and neighborhood characteristics shape access to grocery stores in surprising ways. Using quantitative data that tracks regional migration patterns 2003-2015, sociologists Joowon Jeong and Cathy Yang Liu find little evidence that low-income residents – predominantly residents of color – have less overall  access to food stores across geographic locations. 

Challenging the notion that poorer residents tend to live in food deserts, they instead find that urban residents living in high poverty rate areas have, on average, 1.73 more markets than others. One crucial caveat: in addition to neighborhood characteristics, disparities in food access vary across locations including central city, inner-ring suburbs, and outer ring suburbs. For example, residents living in Latinx-dominated central city neighborhoods and inner-ring suburban African Americans face markedly lower access to food outlets.Challenging the notion that poorer residents tend to live in food deserts, they instead find that urban residents living in high poverty rate areas have, on average, access to 1.73 more markets than others.

These surprising findings reflect some broader recent changes in “who lives where” in U.S. cities. The return of a younger, highly-educated middle class to city centers has pushed many working-class residents to more affordable suburbs. Although suburbs have historically enjoyed ample food options, this may no longer be the case. In the last decade, in particular, Jeong and Yang Liu find that grocery store options for inner-ring urbanites have increased while central city and outer-ring suburbs experienced little change. 

In revitalizing neighborhoods, the influx in food options alone won’t end the food scarcity residents face, with many new amenities like grocery stores and restaurants being costly and out of reach. Instead of offering all poor and working-class residents new affordable options for consumption, these stores disproportionately cater to whiter, affluent residents, meaning quality food remains out of reach for many residents. The food desert myth may be on ice, but food precarity endures.