Working Paper: NBER ID: w20308
Authors: Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach; Mary Zaki
Abstract: School meals programs are the front line of defense against childhood hunger, and while the school lunch program is nearly universally available in U.S. public schools, the school breakfast program has lagged behind in terms of availability and participation. In this paper we use experimental data collected by the USDA to measure the impact of two popular policy innovations aimed at increasing access to the school breakfast program. The first, universal free school breakfast, provides a hot breakfast before school (typically served in the school's cafeteria) to all students regardless of their income eligibility for free or reduced-price meals. The second is the Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) program that provides free school breakfast to all children to be eaten in the classroom during the first few minutes of the school day. We find both policies increase the take-up rate of school breakfast, though much of this reflects shifting breakfast consumption from home to school or consumption of multiple breakfasts and relatively little of the increase is from students gaining access to breakfast. We find little evidence of overall improvements in child 24-hour nutritional intake, health, behavior or achievement, with some evidence of health and behavior improvements among specific subpopulations.
Keywords: School breakfast program; Child nutrition; Health outcomes; Policy evaluation
JEL Codes: I12; I21
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| breakfast consumption (D10) | overall nutritional intake (H51) |
| universal free school breakfast (I24) | take-up rate of school breakfasts (I24) |
| BIC (F33) | take-up rate of school breakfasts (I24) |
| BIC (F33) | likelihood of consuming any breakfast (D19) |
| BIC (F33) | academic achievement (I24) |
| BIC (F33) | health outcomes (I14) |
| BIC (F33) | behavior and health in specific disadvantaged subpopulations (I14) |