The association of food insecurity and school absenteeism: systematic review

Household food insecurity not only affects normal physical growth of young children, but also adversely affects their intellectual capacity and social skills. Studies showed that household food insecurity has a significant association with students’ poor school attendance. The aim of this review was to systematically identify, appraise and synthesise the best available evidence on the association between food insecurity and school absenteeism. All relevant papers for this review were searched using various databases and search engines with initial keywords/search terms: (“Absenteeism” OR “school attendance”) and (“food security” OR “food insecurity”) from the databases of PubMed, Hinari, Google Scholar and CINAHL using relevant keywords and search terms. All papers which were selected for review was subjected to a rigorous and independent appraisal analysis. All results were subjected to double data entry and heterogeneity was assessed using Chi-square test. Finding of this review showed that students from food secure households were 57% less likely to be absent from school (OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.36, 0.51) than students from food insecure households. The test for overall effect showed a high statistical significance at conventional levels (P < 0.00001) and there was no heterogeneity (χ 2 = 3.50, df = 3, P = 0.32) among the included studies for review. Generally, the results of this review indicated that household food insecurity has a strong linkage with students’ school absenteeism. Therefore, the impacts of household food insecurity should be taken into consideration in national nutrition policy formulation and there is also a need of strengthening programs like school feeding.