Universal School Meals in the US: What Can We Learn from the Community Eligibility Provision?

Abstract

Changes in school meal programs can affect well-being of millions of American children. Since 2014, high-poverty schools and districts nationwide had an option to provide universal free meals (UFM) through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). The COVID-19 pandemic expanded UFM to all schools in 2020–2022. Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011, we measured CEP effects on school meal participation, attendance, academic achievement, children’s body weight, and household food security. To provide plausibly causal estimates, we leveraged the exogenous variation in the timing of CEP implementation across states and estimated a difference-in-difference model with child random effects, school and year fixed effects. On average, CEP participation increased the probability of children’s eating free school lunch by 9.3% and daily school attendance by 0.24 percentage points (p < 0.01). We find no evidence that, overall, CEP affected body weight, test scores and household food security among elementary schoolchildren. However, CEP benefited children in low-income families by decreasing the probability of being overweight by 3.1% (p < 0.05) and improving reading scores of Hispanic children by 0.055 standard deviations. UFM expansion can particularly benefit at-risk children and help improve equity in educational and health outcomes.

Purchasing Behavior, Setting, Pricing, Family: Determinants of School Lunch Participation

“…However, an application must be submitted for every child, a procedure that might be daunting, especially for low-educated parents. School-based lunch programs have the potential to address this problem and to facilitate access to lunch participation [2,6,22,[45][46][47].…”

“…The third group of factors are personal or familyrelated conditions and behaviors (special diet, family eating behavior, disadvantaged background). Whereas the latter are elusive to interventions requiring willingness and endurance from the participants and their families, providing free school meals [2] or boosting the students' and parents' positive perception (healthy, timely, high-quality) of the school lunch might be effective [20][21][22]. These intervention approaches have a positive short-term impact on the students' health and well-being and have substantial long-term effects on students, particularly those from disadvantaged households [23].…”

Associations between a Universal Free Breakfast Policy and School Breakfast Program Participation, School Attendance, and Weight Status: A District-Wide Analysis

“…Individual students in schools across the district may have been on time and present more often due to the availability of free breakfast, but these changes were not large enough to detect on the school level. Some studies of universal free meal policies did observe increases in attendance among some student populations [ 27 , 30 , 35 , 48 ]. For example, a study of a UFB policy in New York City schools found that among 3rd to 8th graders there was a small increase in breakfast participation and a small increase in attendance for black students eligible for free meals [ 30 ].…”

“…Implementing universal free breakfast (UFB), where all students receive free school breakfast, may help to reduce barriers around cost and the stigma associated with breakfast participation [ 26 ]. Studies of UFB programs and policies indicate that they are associated with an increase in SBP participation [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ]. However, the extent to which the increase in participation in the SBP leads to improvements in academic and health-related indicators, such as school attendance and weight status, is not clear.…”

Increased School Breakfast Participation from Policy and Program Innovation: The Community Eligibility Provision and Breakfast after the Bell

“…This methodology expands upon recent work that used a multiple logistic regression approach and statewide cross-sectional data in North Carolina from October 2017 to examine SBP participation in relation to both CEP and BATB, finding positive associations between free school breakfast participation independent of and in combination with BATB [ 48 ]. Other previous studies have used DiD approaches to examine CEP among elementary school students [ 49 ] in relation to education outcomes [ 12 , 50 ] and regarding weight status [ 51 ].…”