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The Mixture as Before? Student Responses to the Changing Content of School Meals in India

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  • Rohini Somanathan
  • Bidisha Barooah
  • Farzana Afridi

Abstract

We study how attendance rates of primary school children respond to cost neutral changes in the design of India’s school meal program. Municipal schools in the capital region of Delhi switched from packaged food to on-site cooked meals in 2003, with insignificant changes in the budget available per meal. We use the staggered implementation of this transition and child-level panel data to find that cooked meals resulted in a 3-4 percentage point rise in average monthly attendance with the largest effects observed for early grades. The impact on girls was especially large, but since they attend morning shift schools while boys attend the afternoon shifts, these gender effects may simply reflect benefits from better timed meals. We also find attendance gains concentrated in schools that served diverse menus. Our results suggest that even within constrained budgets, better designed school transfer programs can improve student level outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:10874
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. 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.
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    4. 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 (CSAE), vol. 21(5), pages -760, November.
    5. 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.
    6. Behrman, Jere R & Sengupta, Piyali & Todd, Petra, 2005. "Progressing through PROGRESA: An Impact Assessment of a School Subsidy Experiment in Rural Mexico," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(1), pages 237-275, October.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
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    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.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    primary school children; school meal program; India; Municipal schools; packaged food; cooked meals; implementation; panel data; transition; attendance gains; constrained budget; school transfer; student level programs;
    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

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