Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The National School Lunch Program (NLSP) serves lunch to almost 30 million students, or 57 percent of the total student population, with almost all public schools offering the program. The program plays an important role in promoting the health of the nation’s children – both by being the front line of defense against childhood hunger and a vehicle through which policy can encourage healthy eating. This latter goal has received significant policy attention more recently in light of alarmingly high rates of childhood obesity. In particular, the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) dramatically reformed the NSLP and School Breakfast Program, imposing strict new nutrition standards with the intention of improving the dietary intake of school meal participants.

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between school lunch participation and children’s obesity and other outcomes using data from the School Nutrition Dietary Assessment Study (waves II and IV) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K: 2011). We begin by using data from the two waves of SNDA to investigate patterns in lunch offerings across schools and document changes in the nutritional content of school meals during the first decade of the 2000s. We attempt to measure the impact of participation in school lunch, after accounting for factors that influence students’ decisions whether to participate.  Related, we ask whether the average changes in childhood obesity rates observed over time mask important variation across socio-economic status.