IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_3679.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of School Lunches on Primary School Enrollment: Evidence from India's Midday Meal Scheme

Author

Listed:
  • Rajshri Jayaraman
  • Dora Simroth

Abstract

At the end of 2001, the Indian Supreme Court issued a directive ordering states to institute school lunches – known locally as “midday meals” – in government primary schools. This paper provides a large-scale assessment of the enrollment effects of India’s midday meal scheme, which offers warm lunches, free of cost, to 120 million primary school children across India and is the largest school feeding program in the world. To isolate the causal effect of the policy, we make use of staggered implementation across Indian states in government but not private schools. Using a panel data set of almost 500,000 schools observed annually from 2002 to 2004, we find that midday meals result in substantial increases in primary school enrollment, driven by early primary school responses to the program. Our results are robust to a wide range of specification tests.

Suggested Citation

  • Rajshri Jayaraman & Dora Simroth, 2011. "The Impact of School Lunches on Primary School Enrollment: Evidence from India's Midday Meal Scheme," CESifo Working Paper Series 3679, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_3679
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp3679.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chin, Aimee, 2005. "Can redistributing teachers across schools raise educational attainment? Evidence from Operation Blackboard in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 384-405, December.
    2. Dreze, Jean & Goyal, Aparajita, 2003. "Future of Mid-Day Meals," MPRA Paper 17386, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2008. "Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(3), pages 414-427, August.
    4. Hanushek, Eric A, 1995. "Interpreting Recent Research on Schooling in Developing Countries," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 10(2), pages 227-246, August.
    5. Esther Duflo, 2001. "Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an Unusual Policy Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 795-813, September.
    6. Glewwe, Paul & Kremer, Michael, 2006. "Schools, Teachers, and Education Outcomes in Developing Countries," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 16, pages 945-1017, Elsevier.
    7. Jonathan Gruber & Daniel M. Hungerman, 2008. "The Church Versus the Mall: What Happens When Religion Faces Increased Secular Competition?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 831-862.
    8. Harounan Kazianga & Damien de Walque & Harold Alderman, 2009. "Educational and Health Impacts of Two School Feeding Schemes: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Rural Burkina Faso," Economics Working Paper Series 0904, Oklahoma State University, Department of Economics and Legal Studies in Business.
    9. George Psacharopoulos & Harry Anthony Patrinos, 2004. "Returns to investment in education: a further update," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 111-134.
    10. Geeta Gandhi Kingdon, 2007. "The progress of school education in India," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 23(2), pages 168-195, Summer.
    11. S. Mahendra Dev, 2008. "India," Chapters, in: Anis Chowdhury & Wahiduddin Mahmud (ed.), Handbook on the South Asian Economies, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    13. Gauri, Varun, 2009. "Public interest litigation in India : overreaching or underachieving ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5109, The World Bank.
    14. Donald Bundy & Carmen Burbano & Margaret Grosh & Aulo Gelli & Matthew Jukes & Lesley Drake, 2009. "Rethinking School Feeding Social Safety Nets, Child Development, and the Education Sector," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2634, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Matthieu BOUSSICHAS & Vincent NOSSEK, 2014. "Statistical Assessment of the SDGs in the LDCs and other Vulnerable Countries," Working Papers P114, FERDI.
    2. Singal, Nidhi, 2016. "Schooling children with disabilities: Parental perceptions and experiences," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 33-40.
    3. Asim,Salman & Chase,Robert S. & Dar,Amit & Schmillen,Achim Daniel, 2015. "Improving education outcomes in South Asia : findings from a decade of impact evaluations," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7362, The World Bank.
    4. Matthieu BOUSSICHAS & Vincent NOSSEK, 2014. "État des lieux statistique des Objectifs du Développement Durable (ODD) dans les PMA et les autres pays vulnérables," Working Papers P114, FERDI.
    5. Saswati Das, 2016. "Inequality in Educational Opportunity in India: Evidence and Consequence of Social Exclusion," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 9(1), pages 51-71, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Behrman, Jere R., 2010. "Investment in Education Inputs and Incentives," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4883-4975, Elsevier.
    2. Gaurav Khanna, 2020. "Does Affirmative Action Incentivize Schooling? Evidence from India," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(2), pages 219-233, May.
    3. Lay, Jann, 2010. "MDG Achievements, Determinants, and Resource Needs: What Has Been Learnt?," GIGA Working Papers 137, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    4. David K. Evans & Arkadipta Ghosh, 2008. "Prioritizing Educational Investments in Children in the Developing World," Working Papers 587, RAND Corporation.
    5. Sun, Yue & Zhao, Liqiu & Zhao, Zhong, 2024. "Hukou Status and Children's Education in China," IZA Discussion Papers 16763, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Mukhopadhyay, Abhiroop & Sahoo, Soham, 2016. "Does access to secondary education affect primary schooling? Evidence from India," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 124-142.
    7. Mustafa Özer & Jan Fidrmuc & Mehmet Ali Eryurt, 2018. "Maternal education and childhood immunization in Turkey," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(8), pages 1218-1229, August.
    8. Ludger Wossmann, 2010. "Families, schools and primary-school learning: evidence for Argentina and Colombia in an international perspective," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(21), pages 2645-2665.
    9. Berlinski, Samuel & Galiani, Sebastian, 2007. "The effect of a large expansion of pre-primary school facilities on preschool attendance and maternal employment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 665-680, June.
    10. Carol Propper & John Van Reenen, 2010. "Can Pay Regulation Kill? Panel Data Evidence on the Effect of Labor Markets on Hospital Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(2), pages 222-273, April.
    11. Harounan Kazianga & Leigh Linden & Ali Protik & Matt Sloan, 2015. "Impact Evaluation of Burkina Faso's BRIGHT Program: Design Report," Mathematica Policy Research Reports c0250cd3f27d448ea70d909c3, Mathematica Policy Research.
    12. Xiao, Yun & Li, Li & Zhao, Liqiu, 2017. "Education on the cheap: The long-run effects of a free compulsory education reform in rural china," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 544-562.
    13. León, Gianmarco & Valdivia, Martín, 2015. "Inequality in school resources and academic achievement: Evidence from Peru," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 71-84.
    14. Ama Baafra Abeberese & Todd J. Kumler & Leigh L. Linden, 2014. "Improving Reading Skills by Encouraging Children to Read in School:: A Randomized Evaluation of the Sa Aklat Sisikat Reading Program in the Philippines," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 49(3), pages 611-633.
    15. Chicoine, Luke, 2016. "Identifying National Level Education Reforms in Developing Settings: An Application to Ethiopia," IZA Discussion Papers 9916, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Delesalle, Esther, 2021. "The effect of the Universal Primary Education program on consumption and on the employment sector: Evidence from Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    17. Chakraborty, Tanika & Jayaraman, Rajshri, 2019. "School feeding and learning achievement: Evidence from India's midday meal program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 249-265.
    18. Eric A. Hanushek & Ludger Woessmann, 2008. "The Role of Cognitive Skills in Economic Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(3), pages 607-668, September.
    19. Bhashkar Mazumder & Maria Fernanda Rosales-Rueda & Margaret Triyana, 2023. "Social Interventions, Health, and Well-Being: The Long-Term and Intergenerational Effects of a School Construction Program," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 58(4), pages 1097-1140.
    20. Polcyn, Jan, 2017. "Edukacja jako dobro publiczne - próba kwantyfikacji [Education as a public good – an attempt at quantification]," MPRA Paper 76606, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2017.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    primary school enrollment; school lunches; natural experiment; ITT;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ces:ceswps:_3679. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.