Economy
Teen Hunger Is Still Overlooked
A new working paper examines how poor U.S. families make tough decisions about stretching limited food.
A survey of 1,500 extremely poor families in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio found that teenagers go without food twice as often as their younger brothers and sisters. The study, newly published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, dives into patterns of food allocation in extremely disadvantaged families and illustrates how limited food gets divvied up between children.
Poor parents may opt to forgo meals themselves first, but “then you’re forced to make choices, and parents are deciding to let the teens not have enough,” says Robert Moffitt, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University and lead researcher on the working paper.