IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cde/cdewps/264.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Student responses to the changing content of school meals in India

Author

Listed:
  • Farzana Afridi

    (Indian Statistical Institute)

  • Bidisha Barooah

    (International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie))

  • Rohini Somanathan

    (Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)

Abstract

Can countries with binding budget constraints increase the benefits of school transfers through better program design? We use a cost-neutral change in the design of India's school meal program to study this question. Municipal schools in Delhi switched from packaged snacks to cooked meals in 2003, with no change in payments to meal providers. We use variation in the timing of this transition and child-level panel data to estimate a 3 percentage point rise in average monthly attendance in response to the new program. The effects are largest for early grades, morning school shifts and schools serving diverse menus.

Suggested Citation

  • Farzana Afridi & Bidisha Barooah & Rohini Somanathan, 2016. "Student responses to the changing content of school meals in India," Working papers 264, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cde:cdewps:264
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work264.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rajshri Jayaraman & Dora Simroth, 2015. "The Impact of School Lunches on Primary School Enrollment: Evidence from India's Midday Meal Scheme," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(4), pages 1176-1203, October.
    2. World Food Programme, 2013. "State of School Feeding Worldwide 2013," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 13536.
    3. Harold Alderman & Daniel O. Gilligan & Kim Lehrer, 2012. "The Impact of Food for Education Programs on School Participation in Northern Uganda," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(1), pages 187-218.
    4. Paul Schultz, T., 2004. "School subsidies for the poor: evaluating the Mexican Progresa poverty program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 199-250, June.
    5. Afridi, Farzana, 2010. "Child welfare programs and child nutrition: Evidence from a mandated school meal program in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 152-165, July.
    6. Abhijeet Singh & Albert Park & Stefan Dercon, 2014. "School Meals as a Safety Net: An Evaluation of the Midday Meal Scheme in India," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(2), pages 275-306.
    7. Ravallion, Martin & Wodon, Quentin, 2000. "Does Child Labour Displace Schooling? Evidence on Behavioural Responses to an Enrollment Subsidy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(462), pages 158-175, March.
    8. Harounan Kazianga & Damien de Walque & Harold Alderman, 2012. "Educational and Child Labour Impacts of Two Food-for-Education Schemes: Evidence from a Randomised Trial in Rural Burkina Faso-super- †," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 21(5), pages -760, November.
    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. Chandana Maitra & Vani Sethi & Sayeed Unisa & Sriram Shankar, 2019. "Household Food Insecurity and Maternal and Child Nutritional Status: Evidence from Maharashtra," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(S1), pages 63-101, November.

    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. Rohini Somanathan & Bidisha Barooah & Farzana Afridi, 2016. "The Mixture as Before? Student Responses to the Changing Content of School Meals in India," Working Papers id:10874, eSocialSciences.
    2. Roxana Elena Manea, 2021. "School Feeding Programmes, Education and Food Security in Rural Malawi," CIES Research Paper series 63-2020, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.
    3. 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.
    4. Kaur, Randeep, 2021. "Estimating the impact of school feeding programs: Evidence from mid day meal scheme of India," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    5. Roxana Elena Manea, 2020. "School Feeding Programmes, Education and Food Security in Rural Malawi," CIES Research Paper series 63-2020, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.
    6. Kozhaya, Mireille & Martínez Flores, Fernanda, 2020. "Child Education and Work: Evidence from Mexico's Full-Time School Program," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224567, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Kozhaya, Mireille & Martinez Flores, Fernanda, 2020. "Schooling and child labor: Evidence from Mexico's full-time school program," Ruhr Economic Papers 851, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    8. Drèze, Jean & Khera, Reetika, 2017. "Recent Social Security Initiatives in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 555-572.
    9. Independent Evaluation Group, 2014. "Social Safety Nets and Gender : Learning from Impact Evaluations and World Bank Projects," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 21365.
    10. Bao, Yanxi & Liao, Tingxuan, 2024. "Multidimensional poverty and growth: Evidence from India 1998–2021," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    11. David K. Evans & Arkadipta Ghosh, 2008. "Prioritizing Educational Investments in Children in the Developing World," Working Papers WR-587, RAND Corporation.
    12. Emanuela di Gropello, 2006. "Meeting the Challenges of Secondary Education in Latin America and East Asia : Improving Efficiency and Resource Mobilization," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7173.
    13. Jacobus de Hoop & Furio C. Rosati, 2014. "Cash Transfers and Child Labor," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 29(2), pages 202-234.
    14. Tiwari, Sandeep Kumar & Paltasingh, Kirtti Ranjan & Jena, Pabitra Kumar, 2020. "Caste-class association and school participation in Uttar Pradesh, India: Evidence from NSSO data," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    15. Karthik Muralidharan & Nishith Prakash, 2017. "Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 321-350, July.
    16. Jacobus de Hoop & Jed Friedman & Eeshani Kandpal & Furio C. Rosati, 2019. "Child Schooling and Child Work in the Presence of a Partial Education Subsidy," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 54(2), pages 503-531.
    17. Kate Ambler & Diego Aycinena & Dean Yang, 2015. "Channeling Remittances to Education: A Field Experiment among Migrants from El Salvador," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 207-232, April.
    18. Sudha Narayanan Narayanan & Nicolas Gerber, 2016. "Safety Nets for Food and Nutritional Security in India," FOODSECURE Working papers 37, LEI Wageningen UR.
    19. Indunil De Silva & Sudarno Sumarto, 2015. "How do Educational Transfers Affect Child Labour Supply and Expenditures? Evidence from Indonesia of Impact and Flypaper Effects," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(4), pages 483-507, December.
    20. Sudha Narayanan & Nicolas Gerber, 2015. "Social safety nets for food and nutritional security in India," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2015-031, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    school meals; attendance; program design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • F01 - International Economics - - General - - - Global Outlook

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cde:cdewps:264. 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: Sanjeev Sharma (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdudein.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.