A world-first study has found young people whose mothers didn’t have enough to eat during pregnancy are far less likely to pass NCEA levels or reach university.
The analysis is part of AUT’s Pacific Island Families study – the largest longitudinal study of Pacific families ever undertaken.
Since the year 2000, AUT researchers have been tracking nearly 1400 Pasifika babies born at South Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital.
“We’ve just been following them over time, keeping in touch and interviewing them every couple of years,” said Dr El-Shadan Tautolo, director of the study.
“We ask questions about their health, their education, their wellbeing, employment. Those babies are young adults now, making their own decisions and a lot have their own young families too.”
Of the 1389 babies, nearly half of their mothers told researchers at their first interview that, at times, they didn’t have enough food to eat during their pregnancy.
Seventeen years later, researchers interviewed a cohort of 649 of the children. They found those whose mothers experienced food insecurity while pregnant had much lower educational outcomes.
Researcher Dr Elaine Rush said they looked at the year of gestation and years of academic achievement and found “those babies born into a food insecure household were 1.7 times less likely to achieve as well as babies born into a food secure household”.
According to the data, she said, of the children whose mothers didn’t have enough to eat while pregnant, 10% of them did not reach NCEA level 1, 31% achieved up to NCEA level 3 and only 22% achieved University Entrance.
The study also acknowledged that while there can be many contributing factors to educational outcomes, food insecurity during pregnancy had a strong statistical link to the educational outcomes children had later in life.
Struggle 'getting worse' for families
Food insecurity during pregnancy was also more likely to continue throughout that child’s life.
The findings are not surprising for South Auckland Pasifika midwife Valentina Kulitapa.
“The struggle is getting worse every day,” she said. “We have a lot of mums who can’t afford the right foods they need and the only foods they can access have poor nutritional value.
“For example a woman who has anaemia, we’ll be trying to get her to eat a more iron rich diet and she just can't afford that.”
Kulitapa said food insecurity during pregnancy is often the start of a cycle of poverty in that child’s life.
“We do see it with mums we care for. They might have struggled with getting access to the right food when they were pregnant. After the baby’s born, they're struggling with breastfeeding but can't afford formula and it affects them in terms of their mental health. Then the babies start losing weight.”
Rush said the need to provide better support for struggling mothers is urgent.
“The child cannot wait. Now is the time that the child is being formed and established and their future life is being determined so we need to move quickly on that and make sure all our policies look after all our children, first.
“Every day of a child's life and a family's life is important. That they are well nourished makes a huge difference.”
The study also found that boys whose mothers experienced food insecurity during pregnancy had 2% less muscle mass and 5% more fat tissue at 14.
Girls whose mothers experienced food insecurity during pregnancy were more likely to have a higher BMI by age 14 than girls whose mothers had enough to eat during pregnancy.
Tautolo said there has been a lack of robust evidence around Pacific people so the studies’ findings have been invaluable.
“The value and importance of it just continues to grow and grow because you've got these rich stories of what's going on with our people.
“It provides that evidence, that robust evidence that we need to put in front of our decision makers so that they can address the issues that are facing our communities.”
Rush said the major political parties are missing the mark targeting poverty.
There is disappointment, she says, that years after the Welfare Expert Advisory Group made 42 recommendations to address poverty, the Child Poverty Action group has found the Labour Government has still not fully implemented one recommendation.
But the benefit sanctions the National Party has promised are also worrying, she said.
“I'm very, very concerned. We only have one opportunity and the first thousand days of a child's life are critical. We know that even from conception. So we need to look after our mothers and our prospective new mothers and fathers so much better.”
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