Study shows more and more households in the US don't have enough food on a daily bases.
Especially children/teens are hit hard. They are compelled to make choices no kid ought to be forced to make, like going into crime or selling their body just to not go hungry.
See study (PDF( at link.
[
link to apps.urban.org]
bullet-points from study:
In diverse settings, we heard many of the same themes:
Teen food insecurity is widespread.
Even in focus groups where participants had little
direct experience with food insecurity, teens were aware of classmates and neighbors who
regularly did not have enough to eat.
Teens fear stigma around hunger and actively hide it.
Consequently, many teens refuse
to accept food or assistance in public settings or from people outside of a trusted circle of
friends and family.
Food-insecure teens strategize about how to mitigate their hunger and make food last
longer for the whole family.
They go over to friends’ or relatives’ houses to eat; they save
their school lunch for the weekend.
Parents try to protect teens from hunger and from bearing responsibility for providing for
themselves or others.
However, teens in food-insecure families routinely take on this role,
going hungry so younger siblings can eat or finding ways to bring in food and money.
Teens would overwhelmingly prefer to earn money through a formal job.
However,
prospects for youth employment are extremely limited in most focus group communities—
particularly in those with the highest rates of poverty—and teens often cannot make enough
money with odd jobs to make a dent in family food insecurity.
When faced with acute food insecurity, teens in all but two of the communities said that
youth engage in criminal behavior,
ranging from shoplifting food directly to selling drugs and
stealing items to resell for cash. These behaviors were most common among young men in
communities with the most-limited employment options.
Teens in all 10 communities and in 13 of the 20 focus groups talked about some youth
“selling their body” or engaging in “sex for money” as a strategy to make ends meet.
However, these themes came out most strongly in high-poverty communities where teens
also described sexually coercive environments. Sexual exploitation most
commonly took the form of transactional dating relationships with older adults.
In a few communities, teens talked about going to jail or failing school as viable strategies
for ensuring regular meals
Netherlands
