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Rankings · Schools
Share of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
This measure has no better end. The order describes the states, it does not rank them — see the other direction.
The standard proxy for poverty in a school district: eligibility is set against household income. Read as a description of the students a district serves rather than of the schools themselves. One caveat matters — districts increasingly use community eligibility, which feeds every child free and reports the whole school as eligible, so a high figure can mean a genuinely poor area or a district that opted into universal meals. Shown only where schools covering at least 60% of a county's enrolment reported it, because a share taken from partial reporting describes the reporting schools rather than the county.
New Hampshire has the lowest published free lunch eligible in this comparison, at 23.7%. The next states shown are Utah (29.0%) and North Dakota (31.7%).
The table orders 44 states by share of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. It describes one published measure, not an overall judgment about where to live.
Use the result as a starting point, then compare the underlying source, dates, and local county figures before making a decision. The standard proxy for poverty in a school district: eligibility is set against household income. Read as a description of the students a district serves rather than of the schools themselves. One caveat matters — districts increasingly use community eligibility, which feeds every child free and reports the whole school as eligible, so a high figure can mean a genuinely poor area or a district that opted into universal meals. Shown only where schools covering at least 60% of a county's enrolment reported it, because a share taken from partial reporting describes the reporting schools rather than the county.
Not ranked, because this measure is not published for them: Arizona, District of Columbia, Delaware, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia. Counties where too few schools reported, and those with no public schools.
Free to use. The chart names its source and links back, so it stays honest wherever it ends up.
<iframe src="https://movermath.com/embed/free-lunch-eligible" width="100%" height="420" style="border:0" loading="lazy" title="Share of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch by state"></iframe>Source: NCES Common Core of Data. · How this is built