Effects of school meals on nutrition: Evidence from the start of the school year

Free and reduced-price school lunches are available in nearly all public and some private schools, and most of these schools also offer the School Breakfast Program. Children’s eligibility for these programs is conditioned on having low income. An existing literature documents the effects of school meals and school meal nutrition standards on child outcomes, yet causal evidence on how this program affects nutritional intake is still lacking. We compare nutritional intake between the periods just before and just after the school year begins for children likely to be eligible for free school meals (incomes under 200% of the poverty guideline) versus students unlikely to be eligible for or participate in the program (incomes above 200% of the poverty guideline), using granular data we collected about school year start dates. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find access to school meals reduces caloric intake, driven by a reduction in soda consumption for younger children, and a reduction in total fat intake for older children. Given increasing obesity among school children and the specific ways that calories are reduced, these findings likely represent improvements in students’ diets. We do not find any statistically significant effects on food insecurity or any spillover effects onto mothers’ consumption or time spent on food activities, which suggests these effects come from changes in children’s access to school meals and not from other differences between the academic year and summer for school meal eligible vs. higher income families. These results suggest school meals programs can improve nutritional intake, and policymakers should consider this benefit when considering changes to availability such as expanding or reforming universal free meals programs.