Students without access to enough food are less likely to succeed in their studies.
- According to the UN, a person is food insecure when they do not have regular access to enough safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and healthy life.
- In 2019, around 690 million people suffered from hunger worldwide.
- According to the COP1 – Student Solidarity study, one in two students did not have enough to eat between 2020 and 2021.
University success does not only depend on the quality of the courses. Economic and social factors contribute strongly to this. In the specialist journal Public Health Nutritionresearchers prove it once again: according to their work, people in a situation of food insecurity are more likely to fail in their studies.
More serious school difficulties
The study gathered a sample of approximately 1,500 college students in the United States. The researchers found that 15% of them were food insecure, that is, they had insufficient access to adequate food resources. By observing their success rate in the various exams a few years later, they noticed that students who had been food insecure had a 40% lower success rate in the final high school exams. Their chance of graduating professional or academic were 60% lower compared to other students.
The consequences of the family context
Among these students encountering socio-economic difficulties, those whose parents and grandparents did not go to college or high school were in an even more difficult situation. Less than half of them passed their final high school exams. According to the authors, being a “first generation student“, that is, being the first person in the family to go to high school, is a factor associated with lower exam success. Conversely, students whose parents have graduated, and who are in a situation of food security, encounter fewer difficulties: 76% of them are graduates, compared to only 47% for those who combine food insecurity and the absence of graduates in the family.
Effects aggravated by the crisis
“These results show that we need strong policies to address food insecurity among young people, especially now with the high levels of food insecurity seen during the pandemic.“, comments Julia Wolfson, lead author of the research. In recent months, the coronavirus crisis has worsened the situation of precarious students, deprived of student jobs during the periods of restriction. According to a study of the COP1 – Student Solidarity association, 79% of students used food aid for the first time during the health crisis.
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