SUNDAY, July 22, 2001 (HealthDayNews) -- American kids who go hungry and kids from low-income families are more likely to be in poor health and get sick more often, a new study says.
Although the findings may seem obvious, this is the first national study to examine in detail the link between economic status and children's health and food deprivation.
"There were a few surprises, but the overall finding that hunger is associated with poorer health is not surprising at all. I think that's something we all know. But it hasn't been systematically documented in this way," says study lead author Katherine Alaimo, a community health scholar at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
The one surprise, she adds, was that "at least half of the children who go hungry have at least one parent who is working."
"So this isn't just a problem for welfare families, this isn't a problem for people who aren't working, this is a problem for working families as well."
"We did this study in order to draw attention to the fact that hunger is a significant problem and that it's severe enough in this country to affect kids' health," she notes.
Here are just a few of the study's findings:
- 12.4 percent of school-age kids who don't get enough to eat are in fair-to-poor health, compared to only 4.3 percent of kids who have sufficient food. Likewise, 9 percent of school-age kids without adequate food get frequent stomach aches, compared to 3.3 percent of the kids who eat sufficiently.
- 14.2 percent of preschool children who don't get enough to eat have fair-to-poor health, compared to 3.6 percent of preschool children who have enough food.
- And there were marked differences between school-age children from high-income and low-income families. 9.6 percent in low-income families have fair-or-poor health, compared to 1.5 percent of children in high-income families.
For this study, the researchers analyzed data from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics from 1988-94. That survey included more than 11,000 children between 1 and 16 years old and, among other questions, asked parents to describe the food eaten by the family.
During the NHANES III survey period, more than 15 percent of low-income children, 4 million, lived in families that sometimes or often did not get enough to eat.
The study was published in a recent issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
The finding that working families are affected raises questions about a number of social issues, including adequate wages and affordable health care, and how they affect the health of children.
"We need to think why is it that working families aren't making enough to meet their food needs and what we can do to solve that problem," Alaimo says. She suggests such measures as income tax credits for low-income families, ensuring all families who qualify for food stamps receive them, and increased emphasis on school breakfast and lunch programs could help.
Health insurance is another significant factor. In a previous study, Alaimo found that low-income families without health insurance are twice as likely to not have enough food.
The fact that half the hungry children have at least one working parent sheds new light on the push to get families off welfare and into the workforce, says Dr. Richard Levinson, associate executive director for the American Public Health Association.
"The belief among many, including myself, that getting people off the poverty rolls and putting them into productive work would improve their economic status apparently has not happened," Levinson says.
The study is more proof that good health is subject to many different factors, including diet, housing, education and health care, Levinson says.
What To Do: For more information about hunger in the United States, go to Bread for the World. To find out about U.S. government programs to combat hunger, check out the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service.
