1.0 Introduction
Between 2018 and 2019, there are still over 800 million under-nourished people in the world according to the data released by the World Food Summit. Above 90% of people who are suffering from food insecurity are from developing and underdeveloped regions. Food is the basic human need and fundamental right of every human being on the earth. It is also the major reason why UNO recognized the Right to Food in the Declaration of Human Rights as early as in 1948(Mechlem, 2004). According to the World Food Summit, Food security is referring to the status that every human being can have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that satisfy their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy life(Menezes, 2001). Food insecurity, on the other hand, is a situation that people are lacking secured access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development of a healthy life. Undernutrition, undernourishment or chronic hunger, and malnutrition are several examples of food insecurity existed among children from developing and underdeveloped countries. Many researchers point out that food insecurity may potentially affect child’s educational development and academic performances. In this research, the literature in regards to food security/insecurity and previous studies about how food insecurity may impact child’s education will be critically reviewed. In addition, the impact of food insecurity on child’s non-cognitive skills, cognition and educational development will be comprehensively discussed.
2.0 Literature Review
2.1 Three Pillars of Food Security
Food security is an evolving concept. It often gets refined after new developments and greater social awareness about the necessity. Like the above-mentioned, food security exists when the availability, safety and nutrition of the food supply can be guaranteed. Generally, food security includes three pillars, namely food availability, food access and food use. Rosegrant and Cline(2003) point out that Stable supply, risk reduction and environmental sustainability can promote food security in the world. Food availability can be attained through accurate crop predication, efficient water usage, stacks and international trade. Food access can be promoted through reducing food price, increasing disposable income, improving infrastructure and transport system, adjusting food distribution, etc(Borjas, 2004). Efficient food use and utilization can be achieved through inculcating food and nutrition knowledge among household, correcting food preparation methods and nutrition behaviors, proper hygiene and professional standardization.
2.2 Food Insecurity
Food insecurity, on the other hand, will occur when the three pillars of food security are denied. Brown (2012) discovers that the world is now facing a very severe problem of food insecurity largely because of the increasing population, changing diets, reduced arable land, high transport costs and global climate change. Food insecurity may potentially lead to three negative outcomes, including under-nutrition, undernourishment, and malnutrition. Under-nutrition is a result of prolonged low levels of food intake or low absorption of food consumed. It is closely related to protein, vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Undernourishment, on the other hand, is referring to the status of a person whose food intake regularly provides less than his or her minimum energy requirement. The average energy (protein) requirement per person is about 1,800 Kcal per day(Seres, 2005). The exact requirement is subject to a person’s age, body size, level of activity, physiological status such as illness, gender type, etc. Last, Malnutrition is a term to describe a range of conditions that hinder a person’s body health due to inadequate or unbalanced food intake, or poor absorption.
3.0 Negative Impact of Food Insecurity on Child’s non-cognitive skills
The transition of food insecurity does harm to child’s development of non-cognitive skills. Howard(2011) first point out that child’s behavioral outcomes, including social skills and self-control. The researcher has conducted a semi-structured interview among 4710 elementary students and constructed a computational model to predict transitional effect of food insecurity among them. Howard manages to make a conclusion that food insecurity does negatively influence child’s non-cognitive skill development.
3.1 Food Insecurity may harm child’s interpersonal and social skills.
Food Insecurity will adversely influence child’s social and emotional skill development. Along with physical and cognitive development, every child have to progress through phases of emotional and social skill development. Arguably, all children may be different in their individual development processes. Emotions are not as easy to study or recognize as cognition. For many decades, the study of emotional development has been lagged behind studies in other areas of child development. Johnson and Markowitz(2018)cite data on the recent birth cohort of the U.S -born children from low-income households. The sample size is sufficiently large from 2,800 to 3,700. The two researchers manage to prove that there is a very consistent and strong association between pre-school year food insecurity and child’s problematic behavioral outcomes in terms of interpersonal and social skills. Children from food-insecure households are more reluctant to communicate and interact with others in the kindergarten. As a matter of fact, Emotional and social skill development is very important in the growth of a child’s ability to express their emotions in socially acceptable manner and to be able to understand the emotional content of other people’s communication. Food-insecure children are discovered to be lack of confidence in the development of verbal and communication skills. They become less capable of talking about their own feelings and do not know how to express themselves verbal. Education is not just about concentrating at academic stuffs. Apart from main courses, children are also expected to develop other skills such as social skills. Thus, without food security, it can be observed that children’s social and emotional skill development will be adversely affected because they will have pressure developed from expression and control of emotions.
3.2 Food Insecurity may harm child’s self control
Moreover, food insecurity will also have negative impact on child’s self-control. By definition, self-control is the ability to control one’s emotions, behavior, and desires in the face of external demands in order to function in society. Kimbro and Denney (2015) discover that self-control of children is an essential behavior to achieve goal and to avoid impulses or emotions that could prove to be negative. Self-control can affect everything students do from talking with a classmate to taking a test. The researchers investigate children who are suffering the recession period between 2007 and 2009 when food insecurity in the U.S hit the historical high point. Then in their longitudinal study from 2010 to 2012, among all the 6,300 children in their early childhood, teachers report that majority of them have problematic behaviors in the development of non-cognitive skills such as self-control. Such students perform poorly in terms of impulse control, emotional control and movement control (Duckworth,Gendler&Gross, 2014). Impulse control is the ability to think or stop before acting. However, children from food-insecure family are discovered to have aggressive behaviors. They tend to bully other students while playing. They also do not follow school rules accordingly. Besides, it is also difficult for these students to managing feelings by thinking about goals. For instance, teachers report that over half of the students can become easily frustrated or give up when meeting a challenge. Last, food-insecure students are also discovered to be lacking of the ability to control body movement. Movement control regulates their physical actions and responses in an appropriate way. Without movement control, children are likely to have trouble in quiet and seated activities.
4.0 Negative Impact of Food Insecurity on Child’s Cognitive Development
Food insecurity will also have a negative impact on child’s cognitive development. Cognitive Development is referring to the changing process of thought, learning and perception when a child develops from infancy to adulthood(Ruhm, 2004). In the cognitive development process, a child will build on prior experiences and use them to make sense of the world.
However Food insecurity may potentially harm child’s psychological development in the cognition. Melchior et al., (2012) point out that there is tangible association between food insecurity and child’s psychological difficulties in previous studies. But the major problem is that researchers do not testify the predictive role of food insecurity in leading to a specific type of mental health problem. The group of researchers decide to cite and analyze data from the Longitudinal Study of Child Development in Québec, LSCDQ. The birth year of the target research participants is between 1997 and 1998. They manage to make a conclusion that 95% children from food-insecure families are suffering from depression. Over half of the target children are also identified to have the problem of hyperactivity or inattention in the classroom. Depression comes under the broad category of affective and emotional disorders of childhood and adolescents. It usually includes childhood depression, anxiety disorders, adjustments disorders, PTSD, etc. Without adequate access to food, undernourishment, malnutrition, etc, children are discovered to have impaired thinking, concentration or decision-making. It will lead to the deterioration of schoolwork and school refusal. Moreover, many of them may develop into a high degree of Anhedonia, an inability to enjoy pleasurable activities, social withdrawal, combativeness with parents, delinquent behaviors, etc. In the end, the educational process of children will be adversely affected due to food insecurity.
5.0 Negative Impact of Food Insecurity on Child’s School Performance
Food insecurity can adversely affect student’s education through deteriorating both the quality and quantity of food supply for children. One possible reason is that compromised dietary quantity or quality caused by food insecurity impairs children's academic performance(Bhattacharya et al., 2004). Jyoti, Frongillo and Jones (2005) decide to use a very large sample of 21,000 nationally representative children who are entering kindergarten in 1998 and currently in their 3rd grade. The group of researchers do no only discover that food insecurity is a dominant factor in jeopardizing the academic performance of target children but also figure out that the consequences may be attributed to undernourishment and malnutrition. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines malnutrition as the cellular imbalance between the supply of nutrients and body’s demands(Gundersen&Ziliak, 2015). Glewwe, Jacoby&King(2001) show that nutrition plays a critical role in children’s school performance. Children who have diets lacking in vegetables, fruits, proteins, vitamins, etc, tend to have lower results as compared with peers. Even worse, food insecurity may increase school drop-out rate as students may miss schools, skip lectures, work as child labor or repeat grade. All the above-mentioned problems may further worse students’ school performance. Bernal et al. (2014) first discovers that a significant portion of food-insecure children have to be engaged in the workforce in order to pay for food even below the legal working age. Some children have to take the responsibility to cook for other family members. As a result, they ends with dropping out or skipping lessons. Belachew et al., (2011) further discover that food insecurity can be a dominant factor which leads to the potential problem of high drop-out rate and poor school attendance rate especially in the developing countries. The researchers manage to collect samples from 10 developing countries and discover that children from low-income group and rural area are more likely to face the problem of food insecurity. The school attendance rate among the targeted respondents above are also very low. Faught, et al. (2017) points out that the school attendance rate can be strongly correlated with the problem of malnutrition and health problem caused by food insecurity among children. Like the aforementioned, food insecurity can potentially lead to under-nutrition, under-nourishment, malnutrition and other health problems. It thus prevents children from concentrating on academics because they have to spend time on looking for medical treatment and health care. Besides Food-insecure children are more likely to be procrastinating, rocrastinating, hyperactive, and impatient while studying (Howard, 2011). It further hinders the academic performance of students in school.
6.0 Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be observed that food insecurity will exert an adverse impact on child’s educational process. It potentially impairs child’s non-cognitive skills, cognitive development, and school performance. If children cannot receive nutritious food in the first two years, according to the WHO, they may be stunted for death. Children are the future hope of all mankind. If their educational process is negatively impacted by food insecurity, it is difficult for human society to prepare them for career development because they have not received adequate education. Even worse, without proper education, food-insecure children may even become an imminent source of social and political instability. It would be difficult to develop them into responsible, intelligent and qualified citizen in their adulthood.
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