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How does hunger affect children?
Children are twice as likely to live in households where someone experiences hunger and food insecurity than adults. One in ten adults compared to one in five children live in households where someone suffers from hunger or food insecurity.
Child poverty is more widespread in the United States than in any other industrialized country; at the same time, the U.S. government spends less than any industrialized country to pull its children out of poverty.
We have long known that the minds and bodies of small children need adequate food to develop properly. But science is just beginning to understand the full extent of this relationship. As late as the 1980s, conventional wisdom held that only the most severe forms of malnutrition actually alter brain development. The latest empirical evidence, however, shows that even relatively "mild" undernutrition—the kind of hunger we have in the United States—produces cognitive impairments in children which can last a lifetime, according to Dr. J. Larry Brown, director of the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University.
By taking youngsters and subjecting them to hunger, we rob them of their God-given potential, Dr. Brown continues. "We then deliver them to the schoolhouse door with one arm tied behind their backs and expect teachers to perform an often-impossible task. This, in turn, results in the waste of billions of dollars we invest in the education of our children because hunger prevents so many of them from getting the full value of their educational experience."
What does the global picture look like?
852 million people, mainly in developing countries, are still chronically or acutely undernourished. Although progress against hunger has been made in China and East Asia, the majority of those who are malnourished live in China (114 million) and India (221 million). But Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where hunger is increasing, with 204 million hungry.
How can we prevent starvation, since bad weather and drought are obviously beyond our control?
Only a small percentage of hunger deaths are caused by starvation. Most hunger-related deaths are the result of chronic undernutrition, which weakens the body's ability to ward off diseases, prevalent in poverty-stricken communities. Most hungry people have some food, just not enough food or enough of the right kinds of food.
When people actually starve to death—where virtually no food is available—the cause is primarily political, not weather-related. In North Korea, untold millions starved because of the government's unwillingness to give up on failed economic policies. In Sudan, millions are threatened with starvation because of an ongoing military conflict that devastated the country's ability to produce food and because the government restricts the flow of emergency relief.
At the same time India—a country that experiences chronic hunger—has eliminated the threat of famine and mass starvation. Nobel prizewinning economist Amartya Sen explains that "open journalism and adversarial politics" have made it impossible for local governments "to get away with neglecting prompt and extensive anti-famine measures at the first sign of a famine." India's free press and the investigative role played by journalists as well as opposition party members require politicians to prevent and respond to frequent dips in food supply and occasional drought.
A story of hunger in Bangladesh
Malekha Khatun's story reflects the situation of many women in developing countries. Born in the village of Dhemsha in Bangladesh, she lost her father, the family's wage-earner, when she was very young. Malekha, her younger brother and mother slept outside since they had no house. In this wet climate, they got soaked when it rained unless someone else offered shelter. Her childhood was spent helping her mother work to earn money, attending a few years of school and witnessing the death of her nine-year-old brother from fever.
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