Hunger has a cost.
Dear Friend,
The costs of hunger might surprise you – from shorter lifespans and higher health care costs to lower high school graduation rates and lifetime earnings. As a society, we simply can’t continue under-investing in food and nutrition support. Beyond the clear moral case, it just doesn’t make sense for everything from national security to economic productivity.
September is Hunger Action month. We hope the below article will give you a new perspective on the importance of investing in fresh healthy foods, not only for those struggling with hunger, but for all of us.
Be well,
Reilly Briggs
Policy Coordinator
Families enrolled in the SmartBox pilot, learning about cooking and eating to manage heart disease and diabetes.
Hunger has a cost.
Hunger is expensive, but maybe not in the ways that you imagine. Let’s look at just two issues – the impact of hunger on health and health care costs, and the impact on educational achievement, a key driver for financial well-being. Health care costs of hunger and food insecurity add up to about $160 billion per year. [4] Diabetes and heart disease alone – two diseases directly linked to poor nutrition, cost our society $50 billion per year in health care costs. [1] One study shows that emergency room admissions for hypoglycemia among low-income people with diabetes increase by up to 27% at the end of the month, when food budgets are often depleted. [2] One in three people who check into the emergency room are malnourished, resulting in an extra $15.5 billion per year in health care spending. [3]
We know that addressing food and nutrition insecurity makes a difference. People who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) spend $1,400 less per year on health costs than low-income individuals who don’t receive SNAP benefits.
So why don’t we spend more on insuring that people have enough to eat, and especially enough healthy food? One reason is that, at the federal level, SNAP and other food and nutrition security programs are disconnected from health care spending. Food programs are part of the US Department of Agriculture and are partially designed as a strategy for food producers to get rid of excess food – regardless of its quality. Health care programs – Medicaid and Medicare in particular – are part of Health and Human Services. As a country, we still think of SNAP as a program to address poverty – not as a program to improve health.
Not only does hunger impact health care costs - it also impacts graduation rates in teenagers. In fact, hunger is the cause of $19 billion a year in poor educational outcomes, lost productivity costs, and other special education expenses. [4] How can hunger impact graduation? Experiencing hunger at school makes it harder to focus and retain information. When children are malnourished, their immune systems may be weakened, leading to more days out of school from illness. Children and teens who experience hunger are also more likely to experience depression or anxiety. [5] Overall, hungry children are more likely to drop out of school, for a variety of reasons. And lifetime earnings for people without high school diplomas are $260,000 less on average than peers with a high school diploma. [6] Additionally, high school diplomas help to positively impact gender equity: men who graduate from high school have 29.7% higher lifetime earnings, and women have a staggering 47.5% higher lifetime earnings, than those who don’t graduate.
As you can see, hunger can be extremely expensive—sometimes costing as much as $260,000 per person in lower lifetime earnings and potentially far more in health care costs. While investing in a variety of long-term and short-term food and nutrition security programs such as SNAP, WIC – the program for women and children, school meal programs, and home-delivered meals like Ceres Community Project, and more can seem expensive now, the cost of not making these investments is even greater. We pay for it in the health, quality and length of life, income attainment, and more across our entire society. This month is Hunger Action Month. Join us in taking action to insure that everyone has the healthy food they need to thrive.
What You Can Do
Grow extra food in your garden and donate it. Ceres can generally use donations of home-grown organic produce. Contact Julie (jstuffelbeam@ceresproject.org) for Sonoma County locations or Lindsay (lkatz@ceresproject.org) for our Marin County location to donate.
What'd you learn from this article? Tell your friends and family! Forward them this email. Share it on social media. The more you know, the more you can do.
Volunteer and donate as you can to local hunger organizations (Like us!). Email volunteer@ceresproject.org to get started.
Your donation helps us continue to meet the increased demand for our home-delivered meals. Give a gift to support our work.
Learn about the Medically Tailored Meals bill. This legislation would set up a pilot project across 10 states, similar to the one we are a part of now in California, to study just how home-delivered medically tailored meals impact patient health and healthcare costs.
References
Americans poor diet drives $50 billion a year in health care costs, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Exhaustion of Food Budgets at Month's End and Hospital Admissions for Hypoglycemia, National Center for Biotechnology Information
Impact of Declines in Nutritional Status on Outcomes in Adult Patients Hospitalized for More Than 7 days, Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
$160 BILLION: THE HEALTH COSTS OF HUNGER IN AMERICA, Bread for the World Institute
Reading, writing and hunger: More than 13-million kids in this country go to school, Washington Post
The True Cost of High School Dropouts, Graduation Alliance