The National Nutrition Improvement Program and the equity of educational opportunities: evidence from rural China

The Children’s Nutrition and Health Poverty Alleviation Project is a vital initiative of the Chinese government to boost education, narrow urban-rural educational gaps, and ensure equal educational opportunities. Based on the 2015 China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data, this paper empirically evaluates the impact of the National Nutrition Improvement Program on the equity of rural educational opportunities using Differences-in-Differences (DID) method of the cross-sectional data. Findings indicate that Nutrition Improvement Program (NIP), by providing free nutritious lunches for children, reduced the opportunity cost of children going to school, and significantly promoted the improvement of children’s education level. The implementation of the one-semester policy increased children’s educational years by an average of 0.14, which is attributed to the fact that the NIP has contributed to children’s access to higher levels of education, because we found that the NIP had no significant impact on children’s primary and junior high school enrolment, but significantly increased senior high school and university enrolment by 5.8 and 4.2% points. Heterogeneity analysis reveals a stronger impact on children with less-educated, poorer fathers and a greater effect on boys than girls. Additionally, central pilot counties experience a more significant policy effect than local pilot counties.