ناامنی غذایی، عملکرد علمی، افزایش وزن و مهارت‌های اجتماعی کودکان را تحت تاثیر قرار می‌دهد. Food Insecurity Affects School Children’s Academic Performance, Weight Gain, and Social Skills

The first aim of the study was to examine the effects of household food insecurity at kindergarten on subsequent selected dimensions of child development. Food insecurity at kindergarten predicted impaired academic performance in reading and mathematics for girls and boys, a greater decline in social skills for boys, and greater weight and BMI gains for girls. Food insecurity thus serves as an important marker for identifying children with delayed trajectories of development. After controlling for known confounders in the lagged model, food insecurity at kindergarten predicted poorer mathematics performance for girls, greater BMI and weight gains for girls, and greater improvement in social skills for girls. The relation between social skills and food insecurity in girls was unexpected. A limitation of using the lagged model, however, is that it does not control for changes in food insecurity between kindergarten and 3rd grade, that is, we do not know whether the improvement in social skills observed among girls was due to initial food insecurity or simultaneous improvements in food security. In fact, the dynamic model showed the greatest improvement in social skills was among girls from households becoming food insecure between kindergarten and 3rd grade. For the second aim, we examined the relation of changes in food insecurity over time and concurrent development using dynamic and difference models, each having its own advantages. Whether contrasted with children from persistently food-secure households (in the dynamic model) or households that became food secure (in either the dynamic or difference model), children from households that became food insecure exhibited poorer reading performance, and this was especially significant among girls. The magnitude of the difference was about one-fourth of the SD of the change from K to 3rd grade. For girls, there is evidence for a relatively short lag between food insecurity and its effects on reading from comparing results in Tables 2 and 3. Persistent food insecurity through 3rd grade increased the delay in reading (  ۲٫۹۱۱) relative to the effect of food insecurity at kindergarten alone (  ۰٫۷۳۸). The association of kindergarten food insecurity with reading performance was reversed if the household was no longer food insecure by 3rd grade (  ۰٫۷۳۹). Given evidence of a short lag, and that the difference model theoretically provides the least biased estimates of association under this assumption, we conclude that the difference model represents a true association between food insecurity and delayed reading performance among girls. Although the direction of the association was the same for boys, the association was not significant, and there was no evidence for a relatively short lag. F