Charts of the week: Food insecurity; college loans; unemployment insurance

Here is this week’s selection of charts, graphs, or maps from Brookings experts’ research.

FOOD INSECURITY IMPACTS CHILDREN IN EVERY U.S. STATE

In new research from The Hamilton Project at Brookings, Lauren Bauer and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach show that from 2015-17, “every state had a rate of child exposure to food insecurity above 10 percent,” and in 11 states more than a fifth of children lived in “a food insecure household.” The food insecurity rate in both New Mexico and Arkansas exceeded 26 percent.

PARENTS’ BORROWING FOR CHILD’S COLLEGE HAS TRIPLED OVER PAST 25 YEARS

Adam Looney and Vivien Lee discuss data on parents who borrow money to finance their children’s college. Looking specifically at participants in the Parent PLUS program, Looney and Lee’s findings include the fact that not only are these parents borrowing more than three times as much money from 1990 to 2014, but many more parents owe much more on their loans, default rates have increased, and repayment rates have slowed.

U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS DON’T LAST LONG COMPARED TO OTHER RICH COUNTRIES 

Gary Burtless observes that the unemployment insurance (UI) system in the United States “is one of the least generous in the industrialized world.” But it’s not because weekly payments to replace lost wages are low—U.S. workers’ replacement rate is about average. It’s because U.S. states offer a much shorter duration of benefits than most other countries, an average of 6 months. If Congress doesn’t offset state-level cuts to their UI programs, “past and future cuts in state UI programs will exact a toll” when the next recession hits.