School’s Out, But Hunger’s In: The Challenge of Food Insecurity During the Summer Months for Youth in the U.S.

Many US residents are familiar with the essential role of schools to educate youth, but did you also know that schools are on the front lines of addressing food insecurity for families? According to reporting by the Public Policy Institute of California, summer means increased food insecurity.[1] How can communities of faith better understand and respond to this urgent need?

What is food insecurity?

Food insecurity means that a person has limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or limited ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (for example, without resorting to scavenging or stealing).[2]

Food insecurity is experienced on a spectrum. Surveys ask respondents to indicate whether statements like the following are often, sometimes, or never true:

“We worried whether our food would run out before we got money to buy more.”
“We couldn’t afford to eat balanced meals.”
“We cut the size of meals or skipped meals because there wasn’t enough money for food.”[3]

Food insecurity is not a simple social problem. It is related to larger patterns of income inequality, unemployment or underemployment, the costs of housing and transportation, the gender wage gap, environmental racism, and other factors. For example, there are over 6,500 food deserts in the US. A food desert is a geographic area where residents have few to no convenient options for securing affordable and healthy foods, especially fresh produce. According to research by Kelly M. Bower, food deserts disproportionately impact communities of color, especially Black Americans.[4]

Who is affected by food insecurity?

According to the USDA, household food insecurity affected 12.5% of households with children in 2021 (the 2022 data will be released in October 2023). In 2021, 33.8 million people lived in food-insecure households. Rates of food insecurity were higher than the national average for households with children headed by a single woman, as well as households with incomes below 185% of the poverty line.[5]

What programs exist to address this problem?

Free school lunch programs reduce food insecurity and positively impact student health as well as classroom behavior.[6] On a typical school day, public schools in California serve nearly three million free lunches, and half as many free breakfasts.

What happens when schools close for the summer?

Summer means increased food insecurity. For example, when Public Policy Institute of California compared the number of students who obtained a free meal in May 2022 to the number from July 2022, they saw a decline of 80%.[7] In part, this is because of the hassle of making a special trip to school, community center, or food bank in order to access free meals. Availability of public transportation and parents’ work schedules impact students’ access to meals. According to the California WIC Association, families report that grocery bills are approximately $300 higher in the months in which students are out of school.[8] For families already struggling to pay bills, such an increase in the summer months can break their budgets.

A new program in California that provides food funding to eligible youth via debit cards looks promising, and has received federal approval for implementation this summer. The debit cards are pre-loaded with $120 to assist with food purchases from June through August, 2023. But the program does not serve everyone. Students are not eligible if they graduated prior to May 1, 2023; transferred to a school not participating in the program, or if they are under age 6 and are not enrolled in a K-12 public school. As of June 9, 2023, nine states have yet to submit plans for the federal program in 2023, but beginning in 2024, there will be a new nationwide Summer EBT Program. The cash assistance is meant to be complementary to the free summer lunch programs, as $1.33 per child per day is not enough to cover a full day of meals.[9]

What resources from our faith tradition can help guide us today?

Nutrition is a basic human need; without food and water, human persons will die. Resources from both scripture and tradition can provide important motivation for Christians today to address the crisis of food insecurity, even if they do not explain exactly how Christians should combat food insecurity. For example: “I was hungry and you gave me food.” Mt 25 serves as an important reminder that when we meet the needs of hungry people, we serve Christ. Mary’s Magnificat proclaims a deep and abiding faith in a God who “fills the hungry with good things.” (Lk 1: 50-53). Catholic social teachings affirm the universal destination of goods and preferential option for the poor; again, these do not point to simple solutions but they can guide decision-making. The Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church reaffirms the necessity of a moral economy, an economy that enables a dignified life for all. Addressing issues such as hunger and poverty will require “multifaceted cooperation,” according to the social teachings of the Church (Compendium, 535). Papal teachings of the past century have included access to food, housing, work, and education as human rights (Compendium, 166).

But the US economy poses moral problems. The dominant model of economic orthodoxy in the US is that of neoliberalism, defined by economist Anthony M. Annett as “the premise that free markets and free flows of goods and capital, unrestrained by government interventions, represent the best route to rising prosperity.”[10] As Catholic theologian Kate Ward explains, pervasive inequality in the US means that wealthy and poor people experience vastly different treatment. She reminds us, “economic policies not only shape access to practices; they are also statements by communities about what they value and why.”[11] Could the precarious situation of so many households with children in the US today alert us to our collective failures as a moral community?

Just as the problem of food insecurity is a complex one, so are the solutions. Catholic theologian Daniel Finn explains that sinful social structures inhibit moral agency. His framework explains how we need to attend both to personal responsibility and the social structures that impact personal decisions. “Personal moral responsibility requires not only virtuous decisions within structures,” writes Finn, “but also effective efforts to alter social structures so that restrictions and opportunities make morally good decisions more likely and, in the long run, shape us to be morally better persons.”[12] In such a framework, the structure of neoliberal capitalism mal-forms agents and undermines the well-being of children, but moral agents who recognize this problem and work to alleviate the suffering of hungry people can demonstrate virtuous decisions even within sinful structures.

Of course, food insecurity is usually not the only problem that a family on the margins of US society faces today. Families facing food insecurity often also face issues of systemic racism and other threats to human dignity. I am currently working on a research project that explores the moral dilemmas that pregnant women report, especially when care for dependent children seems to conflict with the obligation to nurture unborn life. Yet pro-life discourse in the US today, especially in the wake of the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court in 2022,[13] focuses too little on the social threats to family life in a neoliberal capitalist economy, including such basic and fixable issues as whether all children in a society have enough to eat. I am increasingly turning not just to the wisdom of Catholic social teachings but also to the scholarship of reproductive justice advocates in the US, because both focus on the social conditions that are necessary for human flourishing. In these frameworks, explicit attention is given to the resources that families need in order to provide for the welfare of children born and unborn. Reproductive justice scholars in particular note that marginalized women face multiple oppressions and make decisions about their pregnancies in light of the very real constraints in which they find themselves.[14]

No matter our conversation partners during these precarious times, more must be done to create easier pathways for struggling families to get the help they need, including adequate nutrition.

How to find a summer lunch program in the United States near you: https://www.fns.usda.gov/meals4kids.

Works Cited

S.A. Andersen, ed., Life Sciences Research Office, “Core Indicators of Nutritional State for Difficult to Sample Populations,” The Journal of Nutrition 120:1557S-1600S, 1990.

Anthony M. Annett, Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2022).

Boone, Kelsey. “Six Things You Need to Know About Summer EBT Benefits.” Food Research and Action Center, February 2, 2023, https://frac.org/blog/six-things-you-need-to-know-about-summer-ebt-benefits

Bower et.al., “The Intersection of Neighborhood Racial Segregation, Poverty, and Urbanicity and its Impact on Food Store Availability in the United States,” Preventive Medicine vol. 58, (January 2014): 33-39, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970577/

Caroline Danielson, “Keeping Students Fed When School Is Out,” June 8, 2023, Public Policy Institute of California: https://www.ppic.org/blog/keeping-students-fed-when-school-is-out/

California Department of Education, “Summer 2023 P-EBT Announcement”: https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/smmr2023pebtannncmnt.asp

California Women Infant Children Association, “Summer Lunch”: https://www.calwic.org/local-agency-support/wic-can-help/march-summer-lunch/

Dan Daly, The Structures of Vice and Virtue (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021).

Danielson, Caroline. “Keeping students fed when school is out.” Public Policy Institute of California, June 8, 2023: https://www.ppic.org/blog/keeping-students-fed-when-school-is-out/

Daniel K. Finn, Consumer Ethics in a Global Economy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019), 157.

Food Research & Action Center, “Benefits of School Lunch,” (2023): https://frac.org/programs/national-school-lunch-program/benefits-school-lunch

—. “Summer EBT.” https://frac.org/summer-ebt

n.a. “Reproductive Justice,” n.d. SisterSong, https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice

Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church,” April 2, 2004. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), “How are Food Security and Insecurity Measured?” https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/measurement/#:~:text=Food%20insecurity%20is%20the%20limited,foods%20in%20socially%20acceptable%20ways.

—. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Key Statistics and Graphics (2021), June 20, 2023, https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics/

—. “Measurement.” USDA Food Insecurity Surveys, October 17, 2022, https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/measurement/#:~:text=Food%20insecurity%20is%20the%20limited,foods%20in%20socially%20acceptable%20ways.

—. “Summer Food Service Program.” N.d. https://www.fns.usda.gov/sfsp/summer-food-service-program

U.S. Supreme Court, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (2022): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf

Kate Ward, Wealth, Virtue, and Moral Luck: Christian Ethics in an Age of Inequality, (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2022) 216.

[1] Caroline Danielson, “Keeping Students Fed When School Is Out,” Public Policy Institute of California: https://www.ppic.org/blog/keeping-students-fed-when-school-is-out/

[2] For definitions of food insecurity: Life Sciences Research Office, S.A. Andersen, ed., “Core Indicators of Nutritional State for Difficult to Sample Populations,” The Journal of Nutrition 120:1557S-1600S, 1990.

[3] United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), “How are Food Security and Insecurity Measured?” https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/measurement/#:~:text=Food%20insecurity%20is%20the%20limited,foods%20in%20socially%20acceptable%20ways.

[4] Bower et.al., “The Intersection of Neighborhood Racial Segregation, Poverty, and Urbanicity and its Impact on Food Store Availability in the United States,” Preventive Medicine vol. 58, (January 2014): 33-39, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970577/

[5] United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Key Statistics and Graphics (2021): https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics/

[6] Food Research & Action Center, “Benefits of School Lunch,” (2023): https://frac.org/programs/national-school-lunch-program/benefits-school-lunch

[7] Caroline Danielson, “Keeping Students Fed When School Is Out,” Public Policy Institute of California: https://www.ppic.org/blog/keeping-students-fed-when-school-is-out/

[8] California Women Infant Children Association, “Summer Lunch”: https://www.calwic.org/local-agency-support/wic-can-help/march-summer-lunch/

[9] California Department of Education, “Summer 2023 P-EBT Announcement”: https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/smmr2023pebtannncmnt.asp

[10] Anthony M. Annett, Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2022), xiv.

[11] Kate Ward, Wealth, Virtue, and Moral Luck: Christian Ethics in an Age of Inequality, (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2022) 216.

[12] Daniel K. Finn, Consumer Ethics in a Global Economy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019), 157. See also the work of Dan Daly, especially The Structures of Vice and Virtue (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021).

[13] U.S. Supreme Court, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (2022): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf

[14] Sister Song is an Atlanta-based reproductive justice coalition: https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice

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