2015
Profiles of Latino Health A Closer Look at Latino Child Nutrition
ISSUE 6: HEALTH IMPLICATIONS FOR LATINO CHILDREN LIVING WITH FOOD INSECURITY* Food insecurity—the condition when families do not have enough resources for everyone in the household to eat full and nutritious meals1—is a serious problem that can have lasting effects on a child’s physical and mental health. The challenge of food insecurity disproportionately affects the Latino† community: nearly 30% of all Latino children live in food-insecure households. While research on the effect of food insecurity on Latino children is scarce, a growing body of literature demonstrates the negative effects of food insecurity on children’s development. Given the disproportionate share of Latino children who are food-insecure and the rapidly growing population of young Latinos in the U.S, the number of Latino children living with food insecurity and in poorer health is also likely to rise.
Food-insecure children are more likely to have worse health than food-secure children.
Figure 1:
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Food-insecure children are more likely to suffer from iron deficiency, asthma, fatigue, stomachaches, headaches, colds, and poor dental health compared to food-secure children.2,3
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A large-scale study in six cities revealed that young children participating in the study from food-insecure households (21%) are more likely than young children from food-secure households (11%) to have fair or poor health and to have been hospitalized at any point since birth (25% vs. 22%).4
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A national study of the effects of food insecurity on children’s health over a nine year period (1998 to 2007) showed that persistent food insecurity starting in kindergarten led to poorer health status among eighth-grade students. Each year of food insecurity led to a lower likelihood of very good or excellent health in 8th grade (see Figure 1).5
Parents in food-insecure households are more likely to report concerns with their young child’s development. •
•
Impact of Food Insecurity on Eighth-Grade Students’ Health
100%
80%
88.46% 78.89% 73.71% 67.31%
60%
58.09% 40%
20%
0%
After controlling for a number of factors (such as children’s health insurance status and parents’ educational achievement), one study showed that parents from foodinsecure households were two-thirds more likely than parents in food-secure households to report that their young children (under age three) experienced some developmental risk.6
0
1
2
3
4
Years of Food Insecurity Source: NCLR calculation using U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Food Environment Atlas.” Washington, DC, 2010, http://www. ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-environment-atlas.aspx (accessed August 2014).
Among low-income Latino families, parents from food-insecure households were more than twice as likely as parents from food-secure homes to express significant concerns about their infants’ and toddlers’ developmental progress.7
* This profile was authored by Minerva Delgado, Consultant to the Health Policy Project in NCLR’s Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation (ORAL), with substantive input and oversight from Samantha Vargas Poppe, Associate Director, Policy Analysis Center, and Steven Lopez, Manager, Health Policy Project. It is an update of a document originally released in 2010 and authored by Kara D. Ryan. NCLR is the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. This brief was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The findings and conclusions presented are those of the author and NCLR alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of our funders. Permission to copy, disseminate, or otherwise use information from this paper is granted, provided that appropriate credit is given to NCLR † The terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” are used interchangeably by the U.S. Census Bureau and throughout this document to refer to persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central and South American, Dominican, Spanish, and other Hispanic descent; they may be of any race. Unless otherwise noted, estimates in this document do not include the 3.7 million residents of Puerto Rico. Comparison data for non-Hispanic Whites and non-Hispanic Blacks are identified respectively as “Whites” and “Blacks.” PAGE 1
2015
Profiles of Latino Health A Closer Look at Latino Child Nutrition
ISSUE 6: HEALTH IMPLICATIONS FOR LATINO CHILDREN LIVING WITH FOOD INSECURITY Hungry children may have more difficulty learning and are more likely to suffer problems with mental or behavioral health. • A survey of over 1,000 elementary school teachers revealed that the main consequences for children who experienced hunger were an inability to concentrate, poor academic performance, and physical ailments such as headaches and stomachaches.8 • Among young children, food insecurity has been linked to poorer academic performance when compared to children from food-secure households.9 For example, one study showed that children from food-insecure households had lower math scores and were more likely to repeat a grade than their foodsecure peers.10 • Research also suggests that food insecurity is associated with an increased risk for mood, anxiety, behavior, or substance use disorders among adolescents.11 Research suggests that hunger and food insecurity can have negative and long-lasting effects on a child’s health. They underscore the urgency of addressing these issues, which threaten to compromise the health and well-being of a large and growing number of Hispanic children.
Endnotes 1 Alisha Coleman-Jensen, Christian Gregory, and Anita Singh, Household Food Security in the United States in 2013. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Washington, DC, 2014. 2 Beth N. Ogata, Dayle Hayes, and M.T. Billings, “Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Nutrition Guidance for Healthy Children Ages 2 to 11 Years,” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 111 (2014): 1257–1276.
7 Children’s Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program, The Impact of Food Insecurity on the Development of Young Low-Income Black and Latino Children (Washington, DC: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 2006). 8 No Kid Hungry, “Hunger in Our Schools,” https://secure.nokidhungry. org/site/SPageNavigator/SHARE/SHARE_Teachers_Report_2012. html (accessed September 2014).
4 John T. Cook et al., “Child Food Insecurity Increases Risks Posed by Household Food Insecurity to Young Children’s Health,” Journal of Nutrition 136 (2006): 1073–1076.
9 Diana F. Jyoti, Edward A. Frongillo, and Sonia J. Jones, “Food Insecurity Affects School Children’s Academic Performance, Weight Gain, and Social Skills,” Journal of Nutrition 135 (2005): 2831–2839. For a thorough overview of these findings, as well as a review of other literature that links food insecurity with children’s poor health and economic outcomes, see John Cook and Karen Jeng, Child Food Insecurity: The Economic Impact on Our Nation (Chicago: Feeding America, 2009).
5 Jeong-Hee Ryu and Judith S. Bartfeld, “Household Food Insecurity During Childhood and Subsequent Health Status: The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort,” American Journal of Public Health 102, no. 11 (November 2012).
10 Katherine Alaimo, Christine M. Olson, and Edward A. Frongillo, Jr., “Food Insufficiency and American School-Aged Children’s Cognitive, Academic, and Psychosocial Development,” Pediatrics 108, no. 1 (2001): 44–53.
6 Ruth Rose-Jacobs et al., “Household Food Insecurity: Associations with At-Risk Infant and Toddler Development,” Pediatrics 121, no. 1 (2008): 65–72.
11 Katie A. McLaughlin, “Food Insecurity and Mental Disorders in a National Sample of U.S. Adolescents,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 51, no. 2 (2012): 1293–1303.
3 Donald Chi et al., “Socioeconomic Status, Food Security, and Dental Caries in US Children: Mediation Analyses of Data From the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2007–2008,” American Journal of Public Health 104 (2014): 860–864.
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