In 21 states, more than half of public school students qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch. That comes from allk12's analysis of federal school data for the 2024-25 school year, covering the 41 states where schools reported the number for at least 85% of their students.
Across those 41 states, 23,418,959 of 41,370,891 students were eligible, or 56.6%. New Mexico had the highest rate at 89.6%, and New Hampshire the lowest at 24%. In raw numbers, California and Texas dwarf everyone else, with about 3.56 million and 3.32 million eligible students.
Free and reduced lunch eligibility is a common stand-in for student poverty in school data. Students from families earning below 130% of the federal poverty level qualify for free lunch, and those between 130% and 185% qualify for reduced-price lunch, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Children in families that receive SNAP and some other benefits are certified automatically, without filling out a form. We explain more in our guide to what free and reduced lunch means for your child's school.
Every state with complete data
| Rank | State | Share eligible | Eligible students |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Mexico | 89.6% | 257,120 |
| 2 | Nevada | 87.3% | 384,678 |
| 3 | North Carolina | 76.8% | 1,124,558 |
| 4 | Mississippi | 73.6% | 316,617 |
| 5 | Oregon | 72.3% | 364,233 |
| 6 | Georgia | 67.9% | 1,163,645 |
| 7 | Louisiana | 66.2% | 440,047 |
| 8 | Arkansas | 65.3% | 311,156 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | 63.6% | 422,451 |
| 10 | California | 63.1% | 3,559,178 |
| 11 | Pennsylvania | 62.6% | 991,870 |
| 12 | Texas | 61.7% | 3,317,029 |
| 13 | Virginia | 59.2% | 738,646 |
| 14 | Kentucky | 58.3% | 376,986 |
| 15 | New York | 57.1% | 1,415,890 |
| 16 | Illinois | 54.6% | 877,360 |
| 16 | Montana | 54.6% | 79,498 |
| 18 | Alabama | 54.3% | 397,297 |
| 19 | Rhode Island | 54.2% | 72,883 |
| 20 | Maryland | 51.3% | 457,308 |
| 21 | Kansas | 50.6% | 234,713 |
| 22 | Missouri | 49.4% | 430,711 |
| 22 | Michigan | 49.4% | 657,733 |
| 24 | Washington | 48.2% | 516,817 |
| 25 | Indiana | 47.4% | 477,517 |
| 26 | Vermont | 46.9% | 36,810 |
| 27 | Florida | 46.4% | 1,307,792 |
| 28 | Hawaii | 46.0% | 76,934 |
| 29 | Colorado | 45.8% | 375,944 |
| 30 | Maine | 45.3% | 75,305 |
| 31 | Connecticut | 44.5% | 218,433 |
| 32 | New Jersey | 43.3% | 582,322 |
| 33 | Wyoming | 42.8% | 36,560 |
| 34 | Idaho | 42.1% | 119,650 |
| 35 | Iowa | 41.6% | 205,771 |
| 36 | South Dakota | 41.2% | 60,148 |
| 37 | Wisconsin | 40.3% | 317,419 |
| 38 | Minnesota | 40.0% | 345,719 |
| 39 | North Dakota | 33.7% | 41,207 |
| 40 | Utah | 29.1% | 193,190 |
| 41 | New Hampshire | 24.0% | 39,814 |
Share of students in reporting public schools who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, 2024-25. Excludes virtual schools. Source: allk12 analysis of NCES Common Core of Data.
The top of the list mixes the South and the West. After New Mexico and Nevada come North Carolina, Mississippi, and Oregon, all above 70%. At the bottom, New Hampshire, Utah, and North Dakota are the only states under 35%, and four Upper Midwest states, Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Iowa, sit near 40%.
Why some states are missing
Nine states along with Washington D.C. are not in the table. Tennessee, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Delaware, and D.C. did not report free and reduced lunch counts for their schools. Arizona and South Carolina reported it for about 1% of students, Ohio for about 54%, Nebraska for 74%, and Alaska for 79%. A statewide rate built from insufficient data would not be reliable, so we left them out.
Some of the gap traces to a change in federal law. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act required states to directly certify eligibility for at least 95% of SNAP participants. NCES says that "with the mandated use of direct certification, several states stopped reporting FRPL eligibility entirely."
The same law created the Community Eligibility Provision, which lets schools in low-income areas serve free meals to every student. That affects the numbers too. According to NCES, "CEP schools may report all students as eligible for free lunch regardless of economic status, since all students are provided a free lunch." A state with many community eligibility schools can therefore show a higher rate than its family incomes alone would produce. It is one reason this figure is best read as a rough measure of need, not an exact count of poor children. Some states now pay for free school meals for every student regardless of income.
School pages on allk12 show each school's free and reduced lunch share where the state reports it, and our report on free lunch rates and test scores looks at how the two line up in each state.
Sources
Free and reduced-price lunch counts and enrollment from allk12's analysis of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data, 2024-25.
NCES: Understanding School Lunch Eligibility in the Common Core of Data
NCES Condition of Education: Concentration of Public School Students Eligible for Free or Reduced-Price Lunch
