“Low income students are now a majority of the schoolchildren attending the nation’s public schools,” said the Southern Education Foundation in a research bulletin. “In 40 of the 50 states, low income students comprised no less than 40 percent of all public schoolchildren. In 21 states, children eligible for free or reduced-price lunches were a majority of the students in 2013.” The South and the West accounted for most of the states where low-income children were the majority of school enrollment.
The rise in the portion of students eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches carries implications for this year’s scheduled renewal of federal child nutrition programs. The foundation said 44 percent of schoolchildren are eligible for free meals and an additional 7 percent for reduced-price lunches.
Child nutrition programs cost $20 billion a year. Two-thirds of the more than 30 million school lunches served daily go to children whose family income is low enough that they qualify for free food, says USDA.
The Census Bureau says the child poverty rate was 19.9 percent at latest count vs the U.S. average of 14.5 percent. The poverty threshold is $19,790 for a family of three and $23,850 for a family of four.