COLUMBUS, Ohio -- New data from the Ohio Department of Education shows the proportion of students getting free and reduced-price school lunches through a federal program has reached a record high.

The proportion of students who get the tax-funded benefit has risen nearly 50 percent in the past five years, and four of every 10 Ohio students are now part of the lunch program for low-income children, The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday.

Students can qualify for free lunches if their household income is under 130 percent of the 2009 federal poverty level, which means a top income of about $28,600 for a family of four. Families earning up to 185 percent of the poverty level can get reduced prices for student lunches.

The lunch aid program is considered a poverty indicator and has long been used in rural and urban districts, but some of the biggest jumps have happened in suburbs where poverty wasn't widely seen.

"We look at the economic information and employment numbers, and this is the aftershock," said Amy Swanson, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Voices for Ohio Children. "This is when reality set in. Poverty is hitting the suburbs in a way that we probably haven't seen in a long time."

In the Columbus suburb of Reynoldsburg, 80 percent of students at the Herbert Mills Elementary School participate in the lunch program -- double the rate from five years ago -- and one-fifth of the students in the suburb's Taylor Road Elementary School now qualify.

"It's a bad economy. There is nothing more to say than that," Taylor Road principal Darrell Propst said. "This is a neighborhood that people have jobs that have been affected by the downturn in the economy."

The data shows the lunch aid program is helping those who need it, Swanson said.

"As working families are struggling with what they are going to feed their kids in the evening, at least they are getting a meal at school," she said.

But the state of the economy might not be the only reason a larger proportion of students are participating in the program. Educators also say a simplified application process has made it easier for families to enroll in the program.

"In the past, families have had to fill out a separate application for each child, and in larger families, that sometimes became a burden, and the families wouldn't complete the process," Westerville school district spokesman Greg Viebranz said. "Now, everything is streamlined into one application, making it a lot easier."