Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom.
Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom.
J Nutr. 2023 Apr;153(4):1101-1110. doi: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2023.02.008. Epub 2023 Feb 11.
Food insecurity is a pressing global challenge with far-reaching consequences for health and well-being. However, little attention has focused specifically on the experiences of children and adolescents over the age of 5 y in food insecure households.
We examine whether the persistence and severity of household food insecurity are negatively associated with children's educational outcomes.
We used data for the younger cohort of the longitudinal Young Lives data from rounds 3 (2009), 4 (2013), and 5 (2016), when children were aged 8 y, 12 y, and 15 y, respectively. Drawing on the Household Food Insecurity and Access Scale, we used descriptive statistics, graphical analysis, and multilevel regressions to document how the persistence and severity of household food insecurity are associated with children's educational outcomes (years of education, maths, and vocabulary [PPVT] test scores). We controlled for potentially confounding sociodemographic characteristics, including children's own baseline grade attained and test scores in "value-added" models, to provide robust estimates of household food insecurity in predicting children's educational outcomes.
Household food insecurity generally declined between 2009 and 2016. Fewer than 50% of households were food secure across the 3 rounds of data we examined. Our robust, multivariate, value-added models show that the persistence and severity of food insecurity are negatively associated with all 3 children's educational outcomes we examined.
We add to a small but growing literature exploring how household food insecurity is associated with children's educational outcomes in the Global South. Our findings on severity of food insecurity highlight the importance of understanding food insecurity along the severity continuum rather than as a dichotomous state, as previously done in existing literature. Addressing household food insecurity in childhood and adolescence may be a key factor to improve children's educational outcomes.
粮食不安全是一个紧迫的全球性挑战，对健康和福祉有着深远的影响。然而，很少有人专门关注 5 岁以上粮食不安全家庭中儿童和青少年的经历。
我们研究家庭粮食不安全的持续性和严重程度是否与儿童的教育成果呈负相关。
我们使用 Young Lives 纵向数据的年轻队列在第 3 轮（2009 年）、第 4 轮（2013 年）和第 5 轮（2016 年）的数据，当时儿童的年龄分别为 8 岁、12 岁和 15 岁。我们利用家庭粮食不安全和获取量表，使用描述性统计、图形分析和多层次回归来记录家庭粮食不安全的持续性和严重程度如何与儿童的教育成果（受教育年限、数学和词汇[PPVT]测试成绩）相关。我们控制了可能混杂的社会人口特征，包括儿童自己的基线年级和“增值”模型中的测试成绩，以提供家庭粮食不安全预测儿童教育成果的稳健估计。
家庭粮食不安全状况总体上在 2009 年至 2016 年间有所下降。在我们研究的 3 轮数据中，不到 50%的家庭粮食安全。我们稳健的多变量增值模型表明，粮食不安全的持续性和严重程度与我们研究的所有 3 项儿童教育成果呈负相关。
我们在探索家庭粮食不安全如何与全球南方儿童的教育成果相关的文献中增加了一项，但文献仍较少。我们关于粮食不安全严重程度的研究结果强调了沿着严重程度连续体而不是像现有文献中那样将粮食不安全视为二分状态来理解粮食不安全的重要性。在儿童和青少年时期解决家庭粮食不安全问题可能是提高儿童教育成果的关键因素。
