Student responses to the changing content of school meals in India

Farzana Afridi, Bidisha Barooah and Rohini Somanathan
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Bidisha Barooah: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie)

No 264, Working papers from Centre for Development 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.

Keywords: school meals; attendance; program design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 E31 F01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-mac and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: Student Responses to the Changing Content of School Meals in India (2016)
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