Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This study investigates whether a universal free lunch program affects elementary students’ school life. It has been challenging to study the causal impact of a universal free meal program because observational studies are limited due to selection bias and large-scale social experiments are rarely possible. Also, there have been few studies that looked at the impact of such programs on students’ school life beyond their physical health and nutrition levels. To consistently estimate the casual impact of the universal program, we take advantage of a natural experiment driven by the policy expansion of the program in South Korea that varied across major cities since 2012. This study uses the panel data from the Korean Children & Youth Panel Survey (KCYPS) that collected individual characteristics, family characteristics and school records of first grade students in 2010. Using this data and the universal program expansion in South Korea, this study uses the Difference-in-Differences method. Our analysis results show that universal free lunch program improved the students’ concentration in class, particularly among students who lived in relatively poor neighborhoods. Also, we find that the program improved the students’ social life, specifically a relationship with their classmates and their home-room teachers, in relatively rich neighborhoods.