Teenage Boys Are More Likely To Go Hungry Next To Their Parents In Low-Income Families (Video)

Hunger is one of the problems that the world faces. Thus, a new study suggests that in an extremely poor American families, teens are most likely to go hungry compared to the younger children.

In the new research that has been published as a working paper for the Unites States National Bureau, Economic Research found that the parents were the first one to sacrifice and go hungry to feed their kids. But at times that the food is still not enough, younger children have the priority over the teens.

The study lead author, Robert Moffitt, said that "If you're really poor, you try to sacrifice yourself first, but when you're forced to make some choices, these parents are deciding to let the teens not have enough," as quoted by UPI.

In the study, the researchers from the Johns Hopkins analyzed the data coming from 1,500 families in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio that have been surveyed several times between 1999 and 2005. The average incomes per month of these families are about $1,558. Also, the majority of these families were headed by single parents who are not employed and receive government assistance, most of them were minorities.

Consumer Health Day reported that according to the study, the researchers found that teens coming from these families went hungry twice as often as their younger siblings.

A professor of economics at Johns Hopkins' Krieger Schools of Arts and Sciences, Robert Moffitt added that, "If they have to give up on something, they're giving up on teenagers. It's hard to imagine parents having to do that."

As follows, the researchers also shared that about 6 percent of the kids, ages 11 years old or younger, were not getting enough food to eat. Thus, the 12 percent of kids ages 12 to 18 were regularly getting hungry. Also, 14 percent of the boys did not get enough food compared to 10 percent of girls.

Moffitt added that the numbers were unexpected and depressing. A lot of low-income families were going through this. The sad part would be the numbers are likely to get worse.