IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/agrebk/qt9w943058.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

School meal quality and academic performance

Author

Listed:
  • Anderson, Michael L
  • Gallagher, Justin
  • Ritchie, Elizabeth Ramirez

Abstract

Improving the nutritional content of public school meals is a topic of intense policy interest. A main motivation is the health of school children, and, in particular, the rising childhood obesity rate. Medical and nutrition literature has long argued that a healthy diet can have a second important impact: improved cognitive function. In this paper, we test whether offering healthier meals affects student achievement as measured by test scores. Our sample includes all California (CA) public schools over a five-year period. We estimate difference-in-differences style regressions using variation that takes advantage of frequent meal-vendor contract turnover. Students at schools that contract with a healthy school-meal vendor score higher on CA state achievement tests. We do not find any evidence that healthier school meals lead to a decrease in obesity rates. The test score gains, while modest in magnitude, come at very low cost.

Suggested Citation

  • Anderson, Michael L & Gallagher, Justin & Ritchie, Elizabeth Ramirez, 2018. "School meal quality and academic performance," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt9w943058, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:agrebk:qt9w943058
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9w943058.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Davis, Will & Kreisman, Daniel & Musaddiq, Tareena, 2023. "The Effect of Universal Free School Meals on Child BMI," IZA Discussion Papers 16387, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Paul Gertler & Tadeja Gracner, 2022. "The Sweet Life: The Long-Term Effects of a Sugar-Rich Early Childhood," NBER Working Papers 30799, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Kurtz, Michael D. & Conway, Karen Smith & Mohr, Robert D., 2020. "Weekend feeding (“BackPack”) programs and student outcomes," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    4. Jacqz, Irene, 2022. "Toxic test scores: The impact of chemical releases on standardized test performance within U.S. schools," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    5. Austin, Wes & Heutel, Garth & Kreisman, Daniel, 2019. "School bus emissions, student health and academic performance," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 109-126.
    6. Abrahamsson, Sara & Bütikofer, Aline & Karbownik , Krzysztof, 2023. "Swallow This: Childhood and Adolescent Exposure to Fast Food Restaurants, BMI, and Cognitive Ability," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 7/2023, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    7. Abouk, Rahi & Adams, Scott, 2022. "Breakfast After the Bell: The Effects of Expanding Access to School Breakfasts on the Weight and Achievement of Elementary School Children," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    8. Marcus, Michelle & Yewell, Katherine G., 2022. "The Effect of Free School Meals on Household Food Purchases: Evidence from the Community Eligibility Provision," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    9. David Frisvold & Joseph Price, 2019. "The Contribution of the School Environment to the Overall Food Environment Experienced by Children," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(1), pages 106-123, July.
    10. Jingru Ren & Xiaodong Zheng & Rodney Smith & Xiangming Fang, 2023. "School feeding program and urban–rural inequality of child health: Evidence from China," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(S1), pages 1399-1416, December.
    11. Benjamin Ly Serena, 2022. "Cognitive consequences of iodine deficiency in adolescence: evidence from salt iodization in Denmark," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(3), pages 869-902, July.
    12. Krista Ruffini & Orgül Öztürk & Pelin Pekgün, 2023. "In-Kind Government Assistance and Crowd-Out of Charitable Services: Evidence from Free School Meals," CESifo Working Paper Series 10763, CESifo.
    13. Alex Hollingsworth & Mike Huang & Ivan J. Rudik & Nicholas J. Sanders, 2020. "A Thousand Cuts: Cumulative Lead Exposure Reduces Academic Achievement," NBER Working Papers 28250, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Gao, Yuan & Lopez, Rigoberto A. & Liao, Ruili & Liu, Xiaoou, 2022. "Public health shocks, learning and diet improvement," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    15. Gao, Yuan & Lopez, Rigoberto & Liao, Ruili & Liu, Xiaoou, 2021. "Public Health Shocks, Learning, and Persistent Diet Improvement," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 314973, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    16. Sofía Collante Zárate & Catherine Rodríguez & Fabio Sanchez, 2022. "El poder de un refrigerio. La alimentación escolar y sus efectos educativos en Colombia," Documentos CEDE 20223, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    17. Askelson, Natoshia M. & Brady, Patrick J. & Jung, Youn Soo & Nguyen-Hoang, Phuong & Ryan, Grace & Scheidel, Carrie & Delger, Patti, 2022. "Using predicted marginal effects to assess the impact of rurality and free and reduced lunch eligibility on a school-based nutrition intervention," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    18. Fang, Guanfu & Zhu, Ying, 2022. "Long-term impacts of school nutrition: Evidence from China’s school meal reform," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:agrebk:qt9w943058. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dabrkus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.