Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Over the past century, school meal programs have been promoted as an important policy tool for improving the health and nutrition of impoverished children in both developed and developing countries. However, their value in improving academic outcomes have often been questioned. I exploit a recent policy change to the U.S. National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to estimate the effect of expanding school lunch programs on academic performances. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), included as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, allows participating schools to provide free meals to all of their students, regardless of family income, as long as at least 40 percent of the students are income eligible in the base year. Using math and reading achievement data from the Department of Education EDFacts, I estimate intent-to-treat (ITT) and treatment-on-treated (TOT) effects for schools who are just above the 40 percent income eligibility cutoff compared to schools who are just below the cutoff and therefore ineligible. I find the expanded school meals program leads to a significant increase in levels of math proficiency by about 1 to 2 percentage points, but has no significant effect on reading achievement. These findings make an important contribution to the literature which in the past has primarily focused on policy changes at the local or regional level with ambiguous results. As such, this research suggests that state and local policymakers should assist eligible schools and school districts to take-up the CEP as an additional tool to raise student achievement rather than leaving those federal dollars on the table.