Universal Access to Free School Meals and Student Achievement

Abstract

Improving nutritional intake can improve children's academic achievement and longterm health outcomes. This paper evaluates the extent to which, and for which groups of students, schoolwide meals affect reading and math performance. Leveraging crossstate variation in the timing of eligibility for schoolwide free meals under the Community Eligibility Provision, I find universal access to free meals substantially increases breakfast and lunch participation. Math performance increases approximately 0.02 standard deviations in districts with the largest shares of students becoming eligible for free meals. Scaling by the share of newly-eligible students, this effect implies gaining access to free meals increases math scores by 0.07 standard deviations. Test score improvements are concentrated among Hispanic and white students -groups with relatively low eligibility rates under the traditional school meals program.

Universal School Meals in the US: What Can We Learn from the Community Eligibility Provision?

“…The magnitude of results in our national sample is, however, more modest, potentially due to our study design or the sample of younger elementary schoolchildren. Our research and prior studies confirm that CEP achieves its primary goal of increasing school meal participation and expanding reach for the School Breakfast Program and the National School Lunch Program [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 23 , 36 , 37 ]. We find evidence for improvements in school meal participation based on data from two independent sources, including school administrators and parents, which makes the findings more reliable.…”

“…For example, if outcomes in the treatment group were improving faster than in the control group before the policy change, the difference-in-difference model would overestimate the policy effect. This study tested the parallel trends assumption using an event study framework to account for the variation in the timing of the policy change (i.e., CEP eligibility), which is consistent with prior economic research on CEP [ 18 , 19 ]. Specifically, the model in equation (1) was re-estimated by including a set of indicators to capture the years before and after the CEP introduction.…”

“…Data on school-level CEP eligibility and participation in all states in SY 2014–2015 and SY 2015–2016 were obtained from the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) [ 31 , 32 ]. To define CEP eligibility and participation for pilot states during SY 2011–2014, we collected administrative data from State Departments of Education and another researcher studying CEP [ 19 ].…”

“…To demonstrate the point on potential selection bias into CEP, Table 1 demonstrates significant differences in the observable mean characteristics of schools that chose to participate in CEP and non-participating schools, including those that were eligible but selected not to participate. To account for potential selection bias and consistent with previous economic research [ 18 , 19 ], the analytic sample in this study was limited to children attending schools that participated in CEP at any point in our data in 2011–2016, excluding children in CEP ineligible (i.e., higher income) schools/districts and CEP eligible schools/districts that did not participate in CEP within two years of its nationwide implementation.…”

“…Recent evaluations, most from specific states, have found that the adoption of CEP has improved school meal participation [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ], attendance [ 18 , 22 , 23 , 24 ], academic achievement [ 18 , 19 , 23 , 24 ], and school food service finances [ 25 , 26 ]. At the same time, CEP was shown to reduce out-of-school suspension and expulsion rates [ 23 , 27 ].…”