There’s an enormous body of scholarship on food insecurity during early childhood, but not a lot during adolescence.
Research from Central Michigan University has linked trouble getting food on the table during adolescence with a lower likelihood of attending college and graduating. The research team analyzed teenagers between 13 and 15-years-old to see whether they dropped out or finished high school, and if they attended and graduated college.
Dr. Sharon Kukla-Acevedo is an associate professor of Public Administration at CMU. She said her team’s research found that specifically adolescents are less likely to go to college and graduate if they experienced food insecurity during those teen years. Food insecurity had the same effect on early childhood and adolescence on high school graduation.
“Honestly, much more research is needed on the adolescent period specifically," she said. "We’re showing that adolescent food insecurity had these host of negative outcomes in young adulthood. But we need to study the period of adolescence with the same rigor that we’re studying the period of early childhood.”
There’s little in the way of public policy to help them compared to younger children, and free and reduced lunch isn’t perfect, said Kukla-Acevedo.
"That program really does suffer from low participation rates among teenagers," she said. "It’s probably because of the design of that program—there's a stigma."
Kukla-Acevedo's team has other research that already pointed towards more negative effects, like risky sexual behavior and poor mental health, she said.
"We’re finding this unique experience—uniquely negative experience of food insecurity during adolescence—having different types of negative outcomes in young adulthood," she said.
Universal lunch, like what some schools offered during the pandemic, is a good early solution, said Kukla-Acevedo. It would combat the stigma associated with reduced lunch while also addressing food insecurity.