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A study out of the University of South Carolina shows that students who have a larger time gap in when they received their SNAP benefits and the date of their math test performed worse than food secure students and themselves at other non-hungry times.
The research team cannot conclusively say that hunger is the cause of decreased math scores, as it could also be family stress about affording food, but they could definitely correlate food stamp distribution to test performance.
For instance, if a student's family received SNAP benefits on April 10, and the math test occurred May 8 when there was likely a gap in affording groceries and days of hunger, the student performed worse on the test. The same student scored better when the food stamps were distributed within days of the test, allowing the family to sufficiently feed the child.
You can read NPR's interview with Shankar Vedantam about the study here.
Studies are beginning to take form to look at correlations between food insecurity and college students as well. If you or your family struggles with affording nutritious food, review the many resources available to you on this site. Don't let school performance suffer due to hunger.
More links on students and food insecurity can be found here:
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