Today my group, Fair Share Education Fund, is releasing our updated report, Childhood Hunger in America's Suburbs: The Changing Geography of Poverty. In addition to releasing the report nationally, we're releasing it at news conferences in Arizona, Colorado and Virginia.
Almost one in every six children in America is at risk of food insecurity. For these children, life is a day-to-day challenge. Hunger impedes learning, can lead to depression and anxiety, and is a predictor of chronic illness.
That childhood hunger exists in America is no surprise. But what might surprise you is where these children live. We have long assumed that childhood hunger is a condition of our urban areas, our inner cities, and perhaps also our rural areas – places like Appalachia or the Mississippi Delta.
In the wake of the 2008 economic crash, we now know we have assumed wrong. Our report finds that childhood hunger is growing much more quickly in America’s suburbs – not our inner cities or rural areas.
The report used eligibility for the National School Lunch Program, an indicator of both poverty and food insecurity, as a measuring stick. We found that a strong plurality of students newly eligible for the free or reduced-cost school lunch program now lives in the suburbs: 48 percent. By comparison, 15 percent live in rural areas, 25 percent live in cities and 12 percent live in small- or mid-sized towns
Even though food insecurity in the aggregate remains greater in the cities than in the suburbs, the rate of childhood hunger is increasing much more quickly in the suburbs. Our research found that of public school children now eligible for the National School Lunch Program, nearly one-third now live in the suburbs. Nearly 6.5 million children were eligible for the school lunch program during the 2012-13 school year; that’s more than the number of eligible students from rural areas and small and mid-sized towns combined.
Why is this important to know? It is important because we must change how we think about childhood hunger. It is no longer an issue that happens “somewhere else.” We must come to understand that “somewhere else” now means “where we live.”
For five decades, going all the way back to the beginning of the War on Poverty, America has treated childhood hunger as a plight that affects primarily the inner cities and rural areas, a problem that can be shunted away or dismissed altogether. While childhood hunger existed in the suburbs, it was not as prevalent, and was not a driving force behind our nation’s policies in fighting hunger.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin once said, “If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger.”
And conquer hunger we must. Letting American children go hungry puts those children at great personal peril, and also puts at risk our education system, our economy and our country’s future. As America continues along the path of economic recovery, we must ensure that children at risk of hunger are not left behind.