Kids eat free: School feeding and family spending on education

Wang, Haining; Cheng, Zhiming

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2021.11.023

Cited by 27 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…Conversely, employing a propensity score matching and difference‐in‐difference (PSM‐DID) approach, Wang et al (2022) concluded that the NIP had a positive impact on the physical and mental health of children, particularly those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and left‐behind children. Another study by Wang and Cheng (2022), using data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), demonstrated that participation in the NIP significantly increased family investment in children's education in rural China. This positive relationship appeared to be influenced by factors such as family economic status, parental time investment in a child's education, the child's health status, and cognitive ability.…”

Section: Policy Background and Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

School feeding program and urban–rural inequality of child health: Evidence from China

Ren,

Zheng,

Smith

et al. 2023

Agribusiness

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School feeding programs have served as go‐to policies for addressing child malnutrition in both developed and developing countries. While an increasing number of studies have investigated the health consequences of school feeding programs, empirical evidence regarding their effects on children's health inequality remains limited. This study examines the impact of China's Nutrition Improvement Program (NIP)—A program that provides free meals for rural students at the compulsory education stage—on rural children's health status and urban–rural health status differentials. The analysis uses data from the 2004–2015 China Health and Nutrition Survey. Leveraging county‐by‐county rollouts of the program, we employ difference‐in‐differences approaches as our identification strategy. The results show that the NIP significantly improves children's height‐for‐age z‐scores by 0.136 standard deviations. Moreover, we find that the NIP alleviates the inequality of opportunity in health between urban and rural children by 21.6% in pilot counties. These findings are robust to a series of validity checks. The effect is more pronounced among students who have a younger age, and live in low social status families. Our findings suggest that school feeding programs are effective in decreasing child malnutrition levels and reducing urban‐rural inequality in the long run. [EconLit citations: I10, I18, D63].

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Section: Policy Background and Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

School feeding program and urban–rural inequality of child health: Evidence from China

Ren,

Zheng,

Smith

et al. 2023

Agribusiness

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“…It can reduce information conflicts between parents and children, thereby promoting more educational investment. 13…”

Section: Status Pof the Poor Ethnic And Mountainous Children's Protec...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Vietnamese Regulations on the Poor Ethnic and Mountainous Children's Protection

NGUYEN THI BAO ANH, CAO THANH THUY

2023

RLJ

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Education and training development is determined as the leading national policy to ensure equality in learning for poor ethnic and mountainous children. The lack of access to quality education also means losing a potential source of future growth for the country. No schooling and access to written language and education not only reduce children's individual potential but also stifle their intellectual attainment and equal opportunities and increase cycles of poverty and disadvantage for all generations over the country. For mountainous and ethnic minority regions, illiterate children are becoming a drag on the development and integration process, preventing the industrialization and modernization of rural agriculture. Besides the positive changes, education in those regions still reveals several limitations and shortcomings that need to be overcome soon to improve the quality further.

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“…Due to the late implementation of China's SNIP policy, this topic has attracted the attention of scholars only in recent years. Currently, a limited body of literature shows that SNIP policies significantly improve student health (Wang et al., 2020, 2022), household human capital investment (Wang & Cheng, 2022), and long‐term performance (Fang & Zhu, 2022). 2 In a recent study, Fan et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free school meals and cognitive ability: Evidence from China's student nutrition improvement plan

Duan,

Liang,

Peng

2024

Health Economics

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The China Student Nutrition Improvement Plan (SNIP) covers 40.6 million students in the compulsory education stage, accounting for 42% of all students enrolled in rural compulsory education in 2021. This paper utilizes the county‐by‐county rollout of the SNIP and estimates the effect of this nutritional intervention on students' cognitive outcomes. We find that SNIP increases math test scores but has a statistically insignificant effect on verbal achievement. The effect is greater for middle school students and children from disadvantaged families. The SNIP affects the cognitive performance of students by improving their health status, increasing school attendance, fostering good study habits, raising educational expectations, and improving the human capital of peers.

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Kids eat free: School feeding and family spending on education

Cited by 27 publications

References 78 publications

School feeding program and urban–rural inequality of child health: Evidence from China

School feeding program and urban–rural inequality of child health: Evidence from China

Vietnamese Regulations on the Poor Ethnic and Mountainous Children's Protection

Free school meals and cognitive ability: Evidence from China's student nutrition improvement plan

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