Food Insecurity Amongst Texas Children Continues to Climb
Over the years, the rate of food insecurity in Texas children has continued to climb. In 2021 alone, over 1.6 million children were food insecure in the state. According to data from Feeding America and the American Community Survey, the leading four counties in Texas experiencing child poverty each have populations of fewer than 3,000 children. In 2021, Brooks County had the highest child poverty rate of all Texas counties at 34%, while Zavala County came in second with nearly 33% of children facing food insecurity.
Approximately 1.6 million children in Texas counties were food insecure in 2020. The number of food-insecure children in Texas rose with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Edwin Marty, the City of Austin’s Food Policy Manager.
“COVID-19 made the existing inequalities much worse. When kids can’t go to school, they can’t access free and reduced lunches, which is the number one way to address food insecurity in school-aged children,” Marty said.
However, Marty said the struggles posed by food insecurity during the pandemic revealed potential solutions for the issue as a whole. He said federal programs, such as COVID-19 relief checks, played a major part in alleviating hunger towards the end of the pandemic.
“It was the most effective thing the federal government has ever done to decrease childhood poverty, which is an absolute correlation to food insecurity,” Marty said.
Despite these solutions, Marty said it’s difficult to see a change in poverty when the concrete solution comes from change in the state legislature. He said it’s unlikely the Texas legislature will make a drastic food policy change soon that will remedy the food insecurity in the state.
While smaller counties in Texas had a higher rate of child food insecurity in 2021, the most populated counties, with over 270,000 children in their population, had their fair share of child poverty.
Approximately 12% of children faced food insecurity in Travis County in 2021. Dr. Alexandra van den Berg, professor in the Department of Behavioral Science and Health Promotion at UT School of Public Health, said depending on the level of food insecurity a family experiences, children face different physical effects.
“You start seeing that parents start buying cheaper food, which is less healthy food. Eventually, if it gets really bad, kids are not eating so they’re not getting as many nutrients and calories,” van den Berg said.
Along with physical side effects, van den Berg said research has shown children facing food insecurity can have more mental health issues.
“What we see is kids who are hungry in the classroom have more behavioral issues because it’s hard to focus,” van den Berg said. “Therefore, they actually have lower grades. Some of that leads to having kids who are food insecure have depression more often.”
According to the Texas Health and Human Services, individuals looking to apply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program must meet criteria such as monthly income limits and certain hourly work requirements to receive benefits for more than three months at a time. As a result of these restrictions, individuals often don’t apply for these programs and instead resort to local assistance for help.
“We live in a day and age where it feels like, for me, very hopeless,” said Nitza Cuevas, a volunteer at ATX Free Fridge. “I think people feel disempowered to do things and to participate in community or in society. But I think it’s important to know that you always have something to offer and can participate in a way that feels good to you.”
Cuevas helped start the mutual aid project in 2020. The project was created to help people who needed food assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic by creating fridges for people to donate to, access food from or help clean. The project is fully volunteer-run and currently consists of six fridges throughout the Austin area. ATX Free Fridge recently opened its newest location on Mar. 30, located in Austin’s West Campus.
Cuevas said the project has impacted the community in more ways than one.
“People feel excited to be sharing with and potentially impacting their community in some way when everything else just feels really large,” Cuevas said. “I think one of the benefits of the fridges is that there is no barrier to participation. People who don’t qualify financially for other assistance can always go to ATX Free Fridge.”
Graphic by Dacia Garcia