Universal School Meals in the US: What Can We Learn from the Community Eligibility Provision?
Nutrients
; 13(8)2021 Jul 30.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1339593
ABSTRACT
Changes in school meal programs can affect well-being of millions of American children. Since 2014, high-poverty schools and districts nationwide had an option to provide universal free meals (UFM) through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). The COVID-19 pandemic expanded UFM to all schools in 2020-2022. Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011, we measured CEP effects on school meal participation, attendance, academic achievement, children's body weight, and household food security. To provide plausibly causal estimates, we leveraged the exogenous variation in the timing of CEP implementation across states and estimated a difference-in-difference model with child random effects, school and year fixed effects. On average, CEP participation increased the probability of children's eating free school lunch by 9.3% and daily school attendance by 0.24 percentage points (p < 0.01). We find no evidence that, overall, CEP affected body weight, test scores and household food security among elementary schoolchildren. However, CEP benefited children in low-income families by decreasing the probability of being overweight by 3.1% (p < 0.05) and improving reading scores of Hispanic children by 0.055 standard deviations. UFM expansion can particularly benefit at-risk children and help improve equity in educational and health outcomes.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Schools
/
Meals
/
Food Assistance
/
Food Services
Type of study:
Cohort study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Child
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Nu13082634
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