Ending Child Hunger
Hilzoy suggests universal free breakfasts for children at school would be a good anti-poverty policy at a time when we’re expecting a sharp rise in the poverty rate due to the recession. I agree and, indeed, this is one of the five points in the five point plan to end child hunger that Joel Berg and Tom Feeedman released the other day for PPI.
This isn’t really an issue I think about much, but when you stop to consider it the long-run social and economic costs of child hunger and malnutrition are incredibly large relative to the low cost (in historical and global terms) of food in the contemporary United States. Hungry kids wind up having problems in school (understandably) and the consequences to them personally and to the country at large of that skill deficit persist for decades. And that’s to say nothing of contemplating the public health issues in play.
47 Responses to “Ending Child Hunger”
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November 25th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Not that hunger is the only nutrition-related problem that America faces.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
It’s fine to point out the “the long-run social and economic costs” of child hunger, but one shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that children being hungry is a bad thing just because of the suffering caused by the hunger itself. This is obvious, but often overlooked, especially in the debate over the efficacy of foreign aid or charity. Economists generally look at the effects of aid on things like economic growth, as well they should, but tend not to count the suffering that is directly alleviated, which has value even if it doesn’t lay the groundwork for future growth.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Feeedman is good. Best typo this week?
November 25th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
My school district in Texas (heavily low-imcome, heavily minority) provides free breakfast to all kids, regardless of whether they formally qualify for aid or not. When I first learned this — shortly before my own daughter began attending public school — I was stunned, and asked why. The answer provided by teachers and administrators was crystal clear: the kids need it to start their day. If they’re hungry, they don’t learn; if they’re hungry, they don’t behave well. There’s no way, really, to tell who needs breakfast on any given day (formal eligibility status notwithstading), and it is far more efficient to some milk and cereal for all kids. The costs are small and, in elementary school at least, it becomes a good way to start they day and get things going. It benefits all students. It’s a great idea.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
If we’re going to expand the free breakfast program, which I think would be a great idea (it would compensate not only for problems of poverty, but also for parental neglect and morning haste), we ought to take a close look at what’s in those breakfasts. Right now they’re pretty bad–lots of sugary carbohydrates. I guess that’s better than nothing, but here’s a chance to do something better still.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
If MattY were really interested in reducing poverty and child hunger, he wouldn’t be such a strong supporter of IllegalImmigration. In fact, supporting that leads to foreign countries encouraging people to come here for the benefits instead of dealing with their own people.
I’d point that out over at Washington Monthly, except they have a habit of deleting non-abusive, on-topic comments that point out how they’re wrong.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Berkeley, CA also gives free breakfast, and midmorning snacks as well, at least to elementary students. For the same reasons as Texas. They have a lunch program designed around healthy, mostly organic food, which the kids have come to like.
This seems like a no-brainer to me. We all pay for it one way or the other.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Agreed. And doubly agreed that they should be nutritious. Also, why not free dinner after sports and after-school programs in the low income districts? Basically, to break the cycle of poverty, don’t we need to turn public schools in areas like the ghetto and rural depressed into defacto boarding schools?
November 25th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
OtherMatt,
Right, because what these kids need is weaker families. And we all know other poor kids are a better influence than their parents.
How about instead of having the state raise these kids we reform the food stamps program. For instance create allowances specifically for healthy breakfast foods and increase overall funding.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
“Right, because what these kids need is weaker families. And we all know other poor kids are a better influence than their parents.”
Sorry dude, but it’d be pretty much impossible to have any weaker situation than the “families” in poverty-stricken areas, particularly inner cities. Pretty much any kind of adult supervision is a vast improvement for them. Turning schools into defacto boarding schools would, in fact, be a large improvement in the lives of many of these kids.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
#6, to carry your argument to its logical conclusion, we could wipe out child poverty and hunger entirely simply by de-naturalizing anyone under the age of majority and deporting them.
(It strikes me a sensible comment deletion policy might take a position on people whose frequent comments somewhat reliably attempt to derail discussion, but invariably include one or more links to the commenter’s blog. “Non-abusive” and “on-topic” are to some extent subjective, but “spam” is pretty cut and dried.)
November 25th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
There’s no way, really, to tell who needs breakfast on any given day (formal eligibility status notwithstading), and it is far more efficient to some milk and cereal for all kids.
This is all true, but there is another reason for universal free breakfast – the stigma attached to poverty-based food programs. Kids are hugely affected by the perception of class by their peers. No one wants to be seen as poor, even if it is abundantly obvious.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Peter @1 – you’re a fucking asshole.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Or, we could seize all the assets of 24AnAssDotCom (Cheetohs, Pornography, and Battlestar Gallactica paraphenalia) and use that to finance the free breakfast program. Everyone wins!
November 25th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Regarding #11’s first paragraph, only in its fevered brain is that a logical rejoinder. It would be like someone who argues against progressive taxation by accusing its supporters of supporting full-on Communism.
And, the fact remains that MattY supports allowing millions of very poor people to come here at will and then, when the impacts of that are shown, comes up with a “solution”. The real solution would be to encourage the sending countries to take care of their own people, but that conflicts with the power-seeking of MattY’s employers.
As for #11’s second paragraph, WaMo has deleted comments without links and just with links to The Corner. Their issue is with the content of the comments, not with the links. And, at the same time as they delete valid comments, their past entries (last I checked) were clogged with real spam, the pills and pr0n kind. Linking to those older entries may make search engines think you’re part of those spammers’ network.
I note also that #11 included a link to its own site, which by its own rules it shouldn’t have done.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
As a child in elementary school in England in the fifties we all got free milk (I think 1/3 pint). My understanding is that this was instituted in Victoria’s time with the intent to build stronger Britts to better man the army and navy that was holding together our global empire. Then Margaret Thatcher came along and eliminated free milk, thus earning the infamous sobriquet “Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher”, and of course the British Empire has been going downhill ever since. So I say lets have free breakfasts for all schoolchildren and we just might start winning our wars of choice.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
#15, if one is concerned with the problem of child hunger as such, then there is no relevant distinction to be drawn between a Mexican child going hungry in Mexico and a Mexican child going hungry in California.
The “solution” that says “that hungry child right there is here illegally, so just kick him out!” results in the child not being here but takes no steps toward the child not being hungry.
Indeed, someone genuinely interested in children not going hungry might argue against harsher immigration enforcement, on the grounds that if the hungry children are here then that makes it a lot easier to feed them. Which (again, if one actually thinks child hunger is a problem that should be solved) is the whole point.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I am a teachers aide at a Charter School in Chicago. I work the morning breakfast for the students and notice a large problem at least at our particular school. The breakfasts are not healthy and usually when healthy components are included they are not the only option and the students pick the unhealthy food. I assume this is because unhealthy food is cheap. Breakfast is often a variety of the following things…
Fruit Loops
Corn Puffs
Frosted Flakes
Pancakes w/syrup
Sausage Links
Eggs
Yogurt
Bagel w/ cream cheese
Milk
Juice
While some students might be less hungry after breakfast, many of these foods are full of refined flower and sugar and just give a lift and crash sort of scenario.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
We see millions of children the world over starve or suffer malnourished lives. It happens in nation after nation, many for several successive generations. It happens here in the U.S. Someone tell me why people procreate when all around them are hungry, malnourished children? If your daily existence is a constant battle for food, shelter and surviving harsh conditions why in the hell do you bring a child into the world? Today, in the U.S., we’re looking at an unknown set of financial conditions with rampant unemployment, homelessness, hunger and social unrest that are very real, both current and future probabilities. Should people be reproducing now? Can they be assured, unless they’re independently wealthy and flush with liquid assets, that they’ll be able to provide for a child in every way necessary? Probably not, yet they’ll have those children. When the inevitable bad times overwhelm some of them they’ll prevail upon the government to help them out. DON’T HAVE THE DAMNED KIDS TO BEGIN WITH! OK? Geez, knock it the hell off. You have’em, you feed them. What’s so damned difficult to understand about that equation. I didn’t screw your girl, you did. You both did this. Now you want other people’s help. Why did you have the kid? Hmmmmm????
November 25th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Likewise, a local school district in MA (heavily low-imcome, heavily minority) provides free breakfast to qualified kids. My mom (a teacher) says its easily 50% of the population and that is not difficult for them to get it. Great idea, yes, but is this even really a problem?
November 25th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
We used to have these amazing things called “parents” who actually had the silly idea they were supposed to feed their kids in the morning! Heck, some of them even figured out how to pack lunches so kids could eat during the day.
Guess those days are gone forever.
November 25th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Adrock asks:
> Great idea, yes, but is this even really a problem?
The teachers I’ve spoken to (at the elementary level) assure me it is, and that providing an inexpensive, simple breakfast to all really does make a difference. The people in the treches see it as a good investment.
Oh, Steve? Watch that bood pressure, dude.
“I enjoy paying taxes. It buys me civilization.”
—– Oliver Wendell Holmes
November 25th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
God, there are some real assholes posting on this thread. I guess it’s an inevitable result of Matt writing all those posts defending the bailout of financial institutions while telling 3 million blue-collar Americans that they can go suck it.
Your social Darwinist/libertarian chickens are coming home to roost, Matt.
November 25th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
To jump on Alex’s point, I was teaching kids in Rhode Island in the 1990’s, and vividly remember the day they were given three donuts and coffee milk (yep, coffee milk) for breakfast. There wasn’t much educatin’ that morning. In a nation crippled by an obesity epidemic, this is just ludicrous.
And I can’t believe there are people here trying to pretend that being opposed to feeding children is some kind of principled moral stand.
November 25th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
We used to have these amazing things called “parents” who actually had the silly idea they were supposed to feed their kids in the morning! Heck, some of them even figured out how to pack lunches so kids could eat during the day.
Guess those days are gone forever.
Not at all – some kids are lucky enough to still have parents like that.
This thread is mainly for people who believe that kids who aren’t lucky enough to have parents like that should maybe be helped with some of those benefits that their own parents can’t or won’t provide – because, after all, it isn’t their fault they didn’t choose better parents.
Civilization: Less Harsh than the Law of the Jungle. Try Some Today!
November 25th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Seriously. No one should go hungry with food as cheap as it is, particularly children.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
‘Jamie’s School Dinners’ — watch the clips on YouTube.
On TW’s point: this is a new breed of poverty, which isn’t simply tied to money: you have a generation of parents who are clueless about nutrition, can’t cook, or don’t have time to cook.
In other news, this is clearly nothing to do with Teh Brown Menace, and Chris ‘24/7Blogwhore’ Kelly’s just a pathetic whining spammer who deserves to be banned, because this is all about generating clicks at his piece-of-shit blog.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
While some students might be less hungry after breakfast, many of these foods are full of refined flower and sugar and just give a lift and crash sort of scenario.
I agree that it’s good to have healthy food; but AFAIK there is no such thing physiologically as a sugar rush. And, I’ve taught when I’ve been hungry (because I was fasting for Yom Kippur) and I’ve taught when I’ve had a sugary breakfast and there’s no comparison; it was really difficult to concentrate when I hadn’t had anything to eat, whereas having pancakes and syrup didn’t impede my mental health at all. (Admittedly it’s been a while since I had Froot Loops.) Any free breakfast is better than none.
November 25th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Anonymiss said:
> And I can’t believe there are people here trying
> to pretend that being opposed to feeding children
> is some kind of principled moral stand.
Actually, it’s a pretty common rationalization on the right when it comes to any social or educational program. It’s much easier to cut or eliminate such a program if you can first convince yourself that the beneficiaries of the program (or in Steve’s argument, their parents) are morally undeserving of help or compassion.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
It strikes me a sensible comment deletion policy might take a position on people whose frequent comments somewhat reliably attempt to derail discussion, but invariably include one or more links to the commenter’s blog. “Non-abusive” and “on-topic” are to some extent subjective, but “spam” is pretty cut and dried.
Also, while I have run afoul of Washington Monthly’s overbroad comments policy myself (they didn’t like me predicting that Hillary Clinton would lose the primaries and not become President because of her Iraq War vote), it seems to me that it’s a perfectly good comments policy to delete ANY comment that doesn’t refer to the President-Elect as President-Elect Obama, Senator Obama, or Barack Obama, or in some other appropriate fashion. Calling him “BHO”, as 24 does, is a clear attempt to bring his irrelevant middle name into the discussion.
At some point, the extreme right wing is going to have to get off of its “Hussein” kick. It didn’t work.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Hancock is set to release on the DVD format in just over a week, and is the latest blockbuster from actor Will Smith. The film, from Sony Pictures, released on July 4 weekend and was a big hit at the box office. The film itself though
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