Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

While variation in federal food and nutritional safety net program services and delivering may occur across the entire childhood period, there is a significant transition in the types of food and nutrition programs for which children qualify as they reach age five and become age eligible to enter kindergarten. Before age five, children are age eligible for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). WIC provides supplemental food assistance, nutrition education, and health referrals to low-income pregnant and post-partum women, and to children under age five who are at nutritional risk. Upon turning old enough to enter school, children can receive school-based food and nutrition programs such as the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). The NSLP provides lunch during the school day and snacks to children during afterschool programs.

Children age out of eligibility for the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program at 60 months of age and become eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) when they start kindergarten. Thus, when children reach age five before entering kindergarten, they may experience a gap in nutrition program coverage. We examine the effect of the coverage gap length using information on the time in months from each child’s state-specific kindergarten eligibility cutoff date related with the states’ starting date of the school year, and examine its impact on child achievement measures. Also, we test whether effects of the coverage gap length diminish by the spring of kindergarten, once children gain access to the NSLP.

Using Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten (ECLS-K: 2011) information that was collected in the fall and spring of kindergarten, preliminary results show that children who enter kindergarten after experiencing a gap in nutrition assistance programs exhibit lower cognitive scores, with observed effect sizes of 0.10 for math and 0.17 for reading for each gap month experienced. Our study also finds that by the spring of kindergarten, the consequences of the coverage gap have ameliorated. While it appears that once children obtain access to NSLP, the gap in reading and math scores diminishes, suggesting that there may not be long-term consequences on children’s cognitive achievement, there might be other consequences, for example on child behavior, socio-emotional functioning, or emotional distress, that need to be understood. Moreover, even if the coverage gap does not have lasting effects on other child well-being measures, policy makers should be aware of the existence of this nutritional gap during a child’s transition into school as a policy failure that could be avoided by extending WIC eligibility to school-age. Given the heightened scrutiny that all social spending is facing in today’s political climate, our research provides clear empirical support for the positive role that nutritional assistance programs can play in the development of cognitive skills upon kindergarten entry.