Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Universal provision of free school meals has become one of the latest political battlegrounds in the United States, and a large body of literature in the US has been looking into what the policy entails. This study looks at an international example of South Korea to discuss the broader mechanisms underlying the policy effects of shifting towards universal welfare. In contrast to the US, the districts that participate in the policy are not restricted to those with high-poverty neighborhoods in South Korea, and the Ministry of Education publishes administrative data on the entire high school population every year. These setups allow for a broader examination of the effects of universal free school meal on a more socioeconomically diverse population. Using fixed effects and random effects models, I estimated the effects of universal free school lunch on high school students’ dropout rate during the period between 2005 and 2014. The regressions outcomes suggest that provision of universal free school lunch has negative correlation with student performance. At the end, I discuss the limitations of the study.