Food and nutrition insecurity can be defined as household-level economic and social condition of limited access to adequate and nutritious food and is a major risk factor for health and nutrition related diseases in the United States. Although food insecurity and its adverse effects to individuals and society has been well studied and the literature has grown considerably over the past decade, most of the existing studies use cross-sectional data and ignore the dynamic nature of food security. Federal food assistance programs serve to alleviate food insecurity and improve food and nutrient intakes of program participants. There is a well-established literature on the effect of food assistance programs, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and National School Lunch Program (NSLP), on participants food security and food and nutrient intake. Lunches served at school by NSLP are provided for free or low-cost to approximately 30 million children each school day, however about 40% of children nationwide bring lunch from home to school. These lunches brought from home (LBFH) are less regulated and not required to meet specific meal requirements and nutrient standards as lunches served at schools do. The objectives of this dissertation are to (1) examine the household food insecurity status over time accounting for participation in assistance programs and (2) assess the existing evidence on the nutritional quality of LBFH to school and consumed by school-age children by conducting a systematic-review and meta-analysis. This dissertation consists of three essays. The objective of the first essay is to examine the effect of past experiences of food insecurity and SNAP on the current food insecurity status of households using a four-year panel data from Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Using bivariate dynamic probit model to take account for the unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity of SNAP participation, we find that the risk of current food insecurity status is highly affected by past food insecurity experiences. Being food insecure in the previous period increases the probability of being food insecure in the current period by 12.9 percentage points. Being food insecure in the initial period results in significantly higher probability of being food insecure in current period by 25.1 percentage points. Also, this study finds that receiving SNAP benefit reduces the likelihood of being food insecure by 11 percentage points. The objective of the second essay is to identify the vulnerable households using factors associated with food insecurity and find the patterns of food insecurity over four consecutive years using a (1) full sample of households and (2) sample of elderly from the SIPP data. Main results suggest that there are two vulnerable groups from both full and elderly samples. The distribution of vulnerable households from the full sample takes downward sloping food insecurity pattern, and they are less likely to work and participate in assistance programs than non-vulnerable households. For elderly sample, the distribution of vulnerable households has inverse-V shape of food insecurity, and elderly are more likely to be unemployed and dependent on assistance programs such as SNAP and SSI compared to non-vulnerable households. The objective of the third essay is to review and synthesize the existing literature on the nutritional quality of LBFH to school. After conducting a literature search of six electronic databases of studies published between 1995 and 2021, we include 39 peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed studies on assessing the nutritional quality of LBFH to school. The results show that LBFH to school are less nutritionally balanced than lunches served at school and often fail to meet nutrition standards. LBFH contains more desserts, snack foods, and sugar-sweetened beverages and significantly less fruit and vegetables compared to lunches served at school. Intervention prog
